


Fighting the Current

by Mercale



Series: Lives Under the Pink Moon [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Blood, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/M, Fantrolls, Flashbacks, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Gen, Hemospectrum, Minor Character Death, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pre-Scratch Alternia, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercale/pseuds/Mercale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before there was Alternia there was another world altogether. Trolls with longer lifespans helped those with shorter find happiness, and peace reigned. But no system is perfect, something Eridan Ampora has been trained to understand on a deep level since he was a child. Raised by the infamous Enforcer Generali, Tethys Hydrus, and moirail to the Imperial Heiress, Eridan is party to some of the darkest secrets of the history of the Empire, including the existence of the hemohierarchist movement. Yet it is only when that movement finally rears its head in his personal life that Eridan truly comes to understand just what damage the past can cause.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the new story of the series. This one, as you can likely tell, is Eridan's story. This story, like others of the series, has its own quirk to it, which you should understand by the end of the chapter.
> 
> Also worth noting is that I'll be using some fantrolls for this story, and in the future, to help me populate the world. This chapter includes one of those trolls: Alaeza Cerasi belonging to Jormungandrising of Tumblr.

There was a nervous sort of energy that filled the corridor which connected the private section of the imperial residency complex to the very public grandballblock. Part of it had to do with the mass of energy that came with nights like this. A larger part was the excitement of the youngest of those assembled in the hall, who were told that for the first time they would be allowed to stay up long enough to enjoy the full festivities that were offered. The smallest part was the cautious tension that came with any highly public display of the royals. The greatest part was from those old enough to understand why they had been asked to curtail tradition for the sake of doing what was proper. 

For Eridan Ampora the tension came from something else entirely. It came from the way his guardian, the great Enforcer Generali Tethys Hydrus, was holding herself. There were few others who would be able to read the tension in her, who spent the better part of their lives working under her in the Enforcers that sought to read her who would never pick up on the details. He was in a unique position, though, and he could read it in the way that his guardian was resting her weight unequally on her feet, one knee locked, and her violet tinted shades pushed up to fully cover her eyes. They were little signs that some of the best fighters might pick up because of how wrong they were in the realm of fighting, but ones that Eridan understood on a deeper level. Tethys wasn't careless enough to let herself be so off on her fighting edge. More than that, as much as Tethys liked her shades, she never let them fully obscure her vision, preferring to glance over the tops of them when she was taking in the area around her, ever vigilant for signs of trouble. 

In any other situation Eridan might have thought her thoughts were elsewhere, on some case or recruit or development with the whole hemohierarchist rumors, but that wasn't even possible. Tethys never allowed herself to be distracted when she wore the black and white Enforcer Imperial dress uniform. His guardian was talented at flipping off the switches of her concerns when she was being called to act as the formal guardian of the Empress, or really when anything important involved her royal moirail. In a way Eridan could understand, but he'd never been able to perfect the same compartmentalization when it came to his own regal moirail, but he didn't have her experience. Still, that didn't quite explain why his guardian was standing there, so off balance, occasionally turning her head just a bit to look back toward where the end of the procession line where the Heiress and Empress stood.

“Eridan,” she finally said, her voice whisper low and pitched just for him. 

“Ma'am?” he acknowledged, equally quiet, even going so far as to not meet her gaze. Sometimes he wondered how strange other trolls his age would think it was that almost half of his conversations with his guardian occurred when they weren't even looking at each other. The reason for it at the moment was clearly related to the giggling group of young, begowned fuchsias who were excitedly gossiping and shuffling around and causing their minders no amount of distress as they attempted to keep the girls in some semblance of order for the procession. Clearly whatever was bothering Tethys was something she didn't want to worry the girls with. Some of them had delicate sensibilities, and things Tethys worried about were never appropriate for such sensibilities. 

“Antees,” Tethys observed, seemingly too herself, “I don't fully remember assigning her to the Heiress for this event. I could have sworn that she was to be assigned to the podium before we began...”

She didn't need to say anything else, didn't bother to give him a direct order. All she had to do was comment and Eridan found himself pushing off of the wall to stride down the line and toward the Heiress and Empress. The minders of the younger fuchsias—especially Lady Reidra, the eldest of the Empress's younger sisters, who had given her life over to caring and education of the fuchsias over these sweeps—shot him a variety of sharp looks for stepping from the line and setting a poor example to the flock of girls. Of course there came a pretty substantial ability to ignore such looks when one wore the Enforcer uniform, and that ability only increased when one was the future Generali, trained from pupation to lead. Nor did it hurt to have it so widely known that he was the Heiress's moirail. It was that latter part that gave him the most wiggle room right now. A troll his age going to speak with his moirail in an environment as tense as this was quite understandable. After all, this was the first time that Eridan was joining the official procession of dignitaries since his official recognition as the Secondar of the Enforcers. 

“Eridan!” Feferi bubbled as he arrived at her side and snapped a smart salute to her. “You don't need to do things pike that for me.”

“Today is a formal occasion, my Heiress. What more cod you expect from me?” he asked, keeping his head bowed at the exact angle that was appropriate when one was speaking to the Heiress.

“To act pike my moray-eel,” she giggled even as she curled a delicate and almost astoundingly strong hand under his chin and forcing his head up so he was only looking down as much as was necessary to meet her eyes, which meant she wasn't moving his head too much. After all, he had quite a bit of height on her, which had only happened in the last sweep and a half. The difference wouldn't last forever if her bloodline was any indication, Eridan noted as he glanced as the Empress and her sister Alaeza, as the two older fuchsias almost rivaled some of the purplebloods Eridan knew. 

“Well, if you infished,” Eridan teased before starting to straighten out the tiara perched on Feferi's head. “What's Alaeza doing here?” 

Normally the fuchsias of the Empress's pupation didn't act as members of the royal entourage, long since set within their own lives and tasks. Only Alaeza and Reidra remained living within the palace walls as their duties held them close to the imperial family. Reidra was responsible in full for the current pupation of fuchsias and would remain with the palace until all were settled with their lines of work before going back to the job she had held for sweeps. Alaeza, though, had lived in the palace for the whole of her life, moving straight from her youth into the role of the official keeper of the records of the Imperial Dynasty. Her tasks ranged from maintaining the Empress's schedule to archiving copies of all records that passed through the Empress's hands, to even acting as a secretary and keeper of the Empress's personal journals to be given over into the hands of the Heiress upon her ascension to the throne. The Imperial journals were said to be filled with observations, suggestions, and words of wisdom from previous Empresses to their successors. Alaeza existed almost within the shadows of Imperial life, observing but not observed. To have her here, now, was almost shocking to Eridan.

“They're debaiting the finner details of a meeting the Empress haddock last night,” Feferi sighed, rolling her eyes at the pair behind her in the most obvious way possible. The older fuchsias quite pointedly ignored her. “Pike they codn't glub aboat it later.”

“If my guardian's taught me anything, she's taught me that sometimes you've got to act like you won't have time to make sure you will. Shore, sometimes it feels like you're being overly cautious, but sometimes you really are making time that can't be found elsewhere,” Eridan observed, shaking his head.

“Well, just because she taught you it doesn't mean it's right,” Feferi countered, the cutest pout she could manage on her lips. “This is an important night and she's wasting it pike this!”

“It is hardly a waste,” Gyliea announced, finally turning her attention to Eridan and Feferi. “Alaeza has been to the archives and performed some much needed research on historical encounters with the Mourning Empire, which provides new insight into yesterday's meeting.”

“Oh,” Feferi mumbled, and Eridan couldn't help but reach out and take her hand in his own. There were few things that demanded so greatly of the Empress and Heiress's time as the return of the Mourning Empire to the borders of Beforan space. Every troll learned early in their school feeding to fear their return. It was for that reason that Eridan had come to believe in acting as if time was something that would be hard to come by, even for a violet blood. If the Empress was concerned with the potential return of the Mourning, well, Eridan for one wasn't going to hold her lack of attention for even as important an event as tonight against her. 

“Forgive me, Empress,” Feferi continued, bowing her head as if she had been reprimanded. “If it pleases you, I would like to borrow Lady Alaeza's time to learn moray aboat this later.”

“If Alaeza feels time came be made,” Gyliea agreed, smiling kindly at Feferi before turning her head in an unspoken question to her sister.

“Of course, my lady,” Alaeza said, bowing her head at precisely the right angle to show respect to superiors. Eridan could see the annoyance flash over both Feferi and Gyliea's faces; they didn't hold as closely to proper formal manners as Alaeza seemed to, and almost seemed offended when the woman acted so before them. “But if you will both please excuse my impropriety, it is growing late. I should leave you to the festivities. If I might beg my leave...”

“Of course, sister,” Gyliea sighed, the briefest dismissive gesture punctuating her words. And, of course, Alaeza took the chance to all but scuttle away from the other fuchsias. “When I was younger I used to say she would develop a spinefish one night. Looks like I was wrong.”

“But she's so sweet,” Feferi countered, smiling up at the Empress. 

Eridan just smiled and remained silent as the two most powerful trolls on the planet started to gossip between themselves. It was really the moment he had been waiting for, as with the two fuchsiabloods so focused on each other, Eridan could finally turn his attention to the reason he had come so far back in the procession line. 

“Secondar Ampora,” Visionar Antees Pithya greeted him before he could even open his mouth to address her. “My assignment to this location was unexpected.”

“How did you know what I was going to ask?” Eridan mumbled under his breath as he tried not to stare at the eyepatch that covered what he knew to be a glowing golden eye. 

“It's not difficult to presume the reasons for some behavior, even without my vision to guide me,” she responded, voice as still and deadpan as he'd ever heard it from her. “Your surreptitious arrival under the pretense to speak with your moirail is wafer thin. The Generali clearly sent you, and the only reason to do so is to question my sudden reassignment to this position in the assemblage. All I know is that when I arrived this evening I was told that this was where I was to be, instead of by the podium. I have no answers for you, for none have been given to me.”

“Well, at least it confirms something,” Eridan sighed and shook his head at the information. “Keep an eye on them, okay?” 

“I will spare both,” Antees agreed, raising a hand to finger the patch that covered her eye. “Nothing remiss will occur on my watch.”

“I'm sure of that,” Eridan agreed, before turning his attention back to his moirail and Empress as if he had never stopped focusing on them. “Forgive the interruption, my Empress, but Lady Alaeza was correct. I should be getting back to my position.”

“Of course,” Gyliea sighed, waving him off with the same gesture she had given her sister. Eridan bowed deeply as he stepped back a few paces before at last turning and striding away from the royal duo. There was little he could do now but return to his guardian and commanding officer and wait. 

* * * * * *

“But I don' wanna...”

“I didn't ask you,” his guardian snapped as she stopped to glare down at him. 

Eridan couldn't help but cringe at the anger in her eyes, and were it not for the fact that her hand was almost painfully tight around his he would have pulled away and run off rather than let her be upset with him. It felt like she was always upset with him these nights. First thing when he woke up she fed him and then sent him away with some stranger to go to this big building filled with lots of other strangers and kids his age where the adults would talk at him for hours and hours and yell at him when he was wrong and some of the kids were mean and teased him when he didn't understand what the adults wanted of him at first. Then, when he got home, she would come back and seem angry at him for reasons he couldn't understand and would plop him down in his room in front of his television to watch shows that had more adults talking at him about things and asked questions even though they never listened when he answered them. After that she would sit him down on the floor of the officeblock and talk to him about what the adults had been telling him all night and asking him questions to make sure he was paying attention, and then she would tell him new things and expect him to listen and it was all too much so that he was almost crying when dinner came before he was sent off to bed. It wasn't quite like what it had been only a sweep ago, when his guardian had been there for him whenever he needed her. 

One of the other kids at school said it was because his guardian didn't like him anymore and regretted taking him in. Sometimes he thought the other kid was right. 

“Do you hate me?” Eridan found himself asking, even though he didn't mean to say it. His guardian was going to be so mad at him for asking, so very, very mad. Adults didn't like it when you questioned them.

Instead of glaring his guardian's eyes went almost impossibly wide, her super pretty purplely-blue-red eyes so big like they were a cartoon. She didn't yell, didn't squeeze his hand, didn't shaker her head and just leave him behind. No, she went down on one knee so she was at his level and swept him up into her arms. Eridan almost wanted to cry because she hadn't hugged him like this in what felt like forever. She held him tight like happiness and cooed soft, mean-nothing words into his ears, and swayed back and forth like she used to when he got hurt and she promised it would get better. Back then he believed it every time, and this time was no different. Okay, so maybe he didn't keep from crying. Maybe he buried his face in her coat and sobbed quietly after he'd wrapped his own arms around her neck. It felt good. It felt right.

“Oh Eridan,” she said at last, still swaying him back and forth like she used to. “Of course I don't hate you. I love you very, very much. You're my perfect little boy. Why would I ever hate you?”

“You... you... just don... seem... ta like... me no more,” he sobbed out, and as he did her arms tightened around him. 

“Eridan, my sweet little moonbeam,” she whispered, her own voice sounding so very sad. “My precious flounder. Did I make you think I didn't love you? Oh little one, that isn't it at all. I've just been so busy lately...” 

“Is that why you make me go ta that place with the adults?”

“You mean the school? Eridan, you have to go to school to learn things. So you can grow up strong and smart.”

“Like you?” he asked, finally looking up at her.

“Just like me.”

“Why can't you teach me?” he insisted, his fins drooping with his sadness. 

“My job means I have to spend a lot of time working and not much with you. I'm sorry about that, but my job is really important.”

“What is it?”

His guardian, Tethys, chuckled far back in her throat, making her chest rumble in a wonderful way that Eridan always loved to feel against his cheek. “I keep people safe. That's my job.”

“People like who?”

“Well, would you like to meet someone I keep safe?” she asked, smiling down at him.

“Yes!” he cheered, grinning back at her. 

“Well we're going to see them right now.”

“Them?”

“The Empress and her Heiress.”

Eridan's eyes went wide, unbelieving. He was going to meet the Empress and Heiress? His guardian knew them? No one at school was ever going to believe him about this. 

“So what do you say, Eridan? Do you want to go now?”

He nodded, and that was all his guardian needed to smile at him widely, a look full of pride. Eridan loved it when she looked at him like that. It made his whole body tingle with happiness. 

“Yes!” 

“Wonderful. Now, if you promise to behave like a little gentleman and walk on your own, I'll even ask the Empress if you can go play with Feferi while we talk. I hear she's got some awesome building toys.”

“Really!” 

“Yep. All sorts of colors.”

By the time they made it to the seaskimmer his feet hurt in his new shoes. When the skimmer reached the underwater entrance to the palace his new coat was all sorts of itchy. Before they made it far enough in to the palace for his guardian to hush him and hurry him along for their meeting he found the air too dry in the palace and his fins felt all crinkly. In the end though he made it, all the way, on his own two feet, and his guardian whispered her praises to him before knocking on a pinkish door that was so huge that it was like three whole seaskimmers could swim through it, one on top of another on top of another. It was so big that Eridan was pretty sure that even the really big adult with the purpley eyes at school who was almost as big as a hive could fit through easily.

For how big it was, though, it opened like a normal door, and soon the pretty thing was creaking open and Eridan was left staring up at a really tall, really pretty adult with eyes as pink as the door and thick black hair gathered up in the biggest braid he'd ever seen before. Without a word she tilted her head kindly to his guardian, before following the line of Tethys' arm down to where her hand gripped his reassuringly. Her eyes went wide like the moons and she smiled and crouched down to look at him. 

“Who is this little gentleman?” the woman asked, her voice low and breathy like the rush of air into the airlock at their hive. Her face was pretty, like a seashell in shape, all big and rounded at the top and coming to a pretty point at the bottom. She had put some kind of finger paint around her eyes and on her lips as well, long stripes that made him think about the pretty colors on shells. 

“This is Eridan, my ward. Eridan, say hello to Lady Reidra. She is the minder of the Heiress, and sister to the Empress.”

“Hello Lady Reidra,” Eridan parroted carefully at his guardian's prompting. 

“How old is your little one?” Reidra asked, returning her attention to his guardian. 

“Nearly two and a half sweeps,” Tethys provided, smiling proudly at Reidra. “He started his schoolfeeding recently.”

“Well, guardianship looks good on you,” Reidra commented, taking a step back to clear the doorway for them. “Gyliea is waiting for you in the sittingblock. Would you like me to...”

“I promised Eridan he could meet the Empress if he behaved himself,” his guardian said. “And he held up his part of the deal.”

The pride in his guardian's voice made Eridan so happy that he stood up as tall as he could and tried to look like he was nearly three already. It was nice when his guardian was proud of him. It meant he had done something to make her happy, and there was nothing better than when his guardian smiled at him. 

“Of course. I'm sure she'd be happy to see him,” Reidra answered as she closed the door after them upon entering the block. “Right this way...”

Eridan's eyes darted around the block as his guardian led him after Reidra, taking in everything he could see until at last his eyes came to rest on the most interesting thing around. He stopped in his tracks and stared at the little troll girl who was playing with a set of colorful toy fishes and not even paying attention to anyone else around her. 

“Eridan,” Tethys insisted, tugging at his hand to get his attention. “Eridan, what are you looking at?”

“She's pretty,” Eridan responded, still staring at the girl. “Can I...”

His guardian just chuckled and shook her head. “Okay. But you have to come meet the Empress later. Now play nice and remember that she's smaller than you and not as strong as you yet. You could hurt her and that would be bad...”

“I won't hurt her,” Eridan promised as his guardian released his hand. “I won't let anything hurt her!” 

It was a promise in the heat of the moment that he didn't know he would strive to keep for the rest of his life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been gone so long. There has been even more stupid shit going on in my life lately and this is really the first chance I've had to sit down and write what needed to be written. But I'm back and hopefully we can get this into some smooth sailing territory. See the end of the chapter for credits for the fantrolls I've borrowed for this chapter. Would have had this up sooner but I lost half of the chapter and had to recover from the depression before rewriting.

Silence overcame the group as the doors before them opened. There wasn't a sign beyond that signals that the procession was about to start. Even the tenders of the tittering flock of young fuchsiabloods were silent and still as the movement began, starting with the youngest of the girls, little Laeris actually very still and attentive and for once not defaulting to her prankster nature. She had been so proud when Reidra had told her about her duty to lead everyone into the celebration. Maybe it was the honor of being the first of the proud fuchsiabloods who would enter the hall that had calmed her down. She had started forward with no command, continuing right past Eridan and Tethys as they stood aside for the girls to enter the room. While they had held the head of the line while it was waiting, that had been more because of Tethys's concern for security than because they belonged there. Now they watched as the girls filed out, their dresses flowing around them like silk veils as they moved with all the regal power and assurance one expected of the fuchsiabloods. It wasn't until the oldest of the flock had swept past them that Eridan and his guardian reinserted themselves into the line and started forward.

Part of being an Enforcer was in being attentive to the small details. As he strode forward he instantly started to seek out the little things that other trolls wouldn't notice. There was a difference in the way his boots and his guardian's sounded on the marble floors, a clear sign that she was wearing the heavier combat boots she wore when she was worried there was a chance for a fight. The tension in her stance wasn't gone either; Eridan could see that in the cant of her shoulders. From behind him he could hear the quietest whisper of fabric against hair as Antees removed her eyepatch and likely hid it away in her pocket. And more than anything he was aware of the way that the watery blue light that spilled from the wall sconces was giving way to a more vibrant whitish-pink light that lit the grandballblock. The light in this hall was meant to cater toward seadweller vision, not land, and there it was clearly lit for the masses. 

Soon, too soon maybe, Eridan's feet halted him in place, coming together smartly before turning sharply to face the rest of the room and the assembled trolls. Routine makes him take the large step back, putting him between the chairs set aside for the flock and the slightly more intricate ones meant for Feferi and the Empress. His place was between the flock and the Heiress, their protection for the evening. Antees had already taken her own place a half a step behind the chairs meant for the Empress and her heir. Tethys had continued on to the other side of the chairs, closest to the podium; her eyes already darting around the room. Eridan wanted to do the same, but he found himself, as always, drawn to the faint scent of salt and lavender that was Feferi's particular scent. Without waiting to be asked he held his hand out to her and she smiled as she laid her delicate fingers in his, slowly turning past him in a oft rehearsed move that made her dress swirl around her gracefully as she came to a stop before her chair and daintily sitting on the very edge of it, her legs crossed just so at the ankles to create the perfect image of a cultured and elegant young woman. He actually had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling at the poise his moirail displayed. She was going to be a wonderful Empress some sweep. She would rule not only because of the respect and belief of her people, but because they truly loved her, just as he did. Okay, so maybe not just as he did, she'd only really need him as a moirail until his passing, but that was a long time away if he had anything to say about it.

The Empress must have passed him while Eridan was so enraptured with his moirail, because when Eridan finally tore himself from staring at Feferi from the corner of his eye he could see Empress Gyliea standing before the podium, looking as regal and collected as she ever did. She looked ready to speak, a speech Eridan had heard rehearsed a few times over the last nights’ going over the arrangements with Feferi in the royal meetingblock. It was his familiarity with the words, the long sweeps he had spent becoming less enamored with the majesty of the Empress in favor of that of his moirail, and duty itself, that found Eridan's eyes casting about the room. It was half a heartbeat before a handful of silver flashes that Antees shouted and lunged from behind him to tackle Feferi into him. Training jumped to the fore of his pan and Eridan was suddenly moving away from his moirail, lunging for the nearest of the younger fuchsiabloods. His only thought was to ask just what had made Antees cry out like that, and only later would he be told about the scene that played out in her vision and in the grandballroom just after he moved to protect as he was trained to do. All he knew was the sound of the explosion behind him and a sick, sinking feeling that there was only one place it could have come from. 

The screams started almost instantly, coming at the same time Eridan couldn't help but note a sharp, aching pain coming from the back of his head. That, though, was a concern to be filed away for later review as he lifted his head from the back of Alrena's neck and let his eyes take in the state of the room. What he saw was a mixture of chaos and discipline: there were screaming trolls everywhere, mixed with ones who had fallen to the floor both near to the podium and far further away. It was more than clear that the trolls furthest away hadn't fallen because of the explosion—what else could it have been—but because of some other foul business. Business that came from the least expected source: the uniformed Enforcers all around the room. The trolls all around the room that should have been moving to secure the doors and then see to the injured were instead moving methodically through the room, knocking out any troll who failed to heed them or who stood in their way. Some trolls were lucky, only hit in the stomach with a balled up fist, but Eridan could see others being beaten, or dealt hard blows to the horns or backs of the heads. These weren't the men and women that he and his guardian had chosen. They weren't Enforcers. 

“Stay here, keep your head down,” Eridan ordered Alrena, knowing she would obey and try to keep her sisters quiet. Something was clearly wrong and she had long since learned that obeying Eridan in an emergency was the best choice. He only hoped she would be able to handle the others. 

“Fef,” Eridan hissed as he turned around and crawled his way over to where his moirail was, Antees's body laying over hers. The sound of his voice apparently managed to achieve what the screaming had not, awakening the Heiress and the Visionar. Immediately Antees lifted herself from Feferi's back, groaning in pain as she did. There was a hunk of wood sticking out of her arm, and Eridan cringed to think of just where it had come from and what it meant. Still he had refused to look past Feferi toward where the podium was supposed to be. Sometimes there were things one was certain of that they didn't want confirmed, and this was one of those times. Instead he turned his whole attention to looking over Feferi, making sure she wasn't hurt. 

“Eridan?” she asked, lifting her head and staring at him in a daze. “What's...”

“Are you hurt?” he insisted, raising his hands to hold her face staring at him rather than allowing her to turn back to look for her guardian. This wasn't the time for either of them to have to face that. Even as he asked he started to look her over, quickly taking in what he could of her state. Her dress, her wonderful fine dress that had been made for the occasion, was covered with soot and torn in places, but he couldn't see a single drop of her precious blood tainting the fabric. Of course that wouldn't tell him anything about any internal injuries. Only an experienced healthtender could do that, and he wasn't even an amateur. There was only so much he could do beyond worry over her. 

“I'm fine,” she questioned more than stated, and Antees shot Eridan a look that said she agreed with Feferi's conclusion. Well, at least that was something. 

“Ampora...” Antees added, her voice hoarse. “This isn't over. It...”

The yellowblood suddenly doubled over in pain, both hands moving to cover her eye. 

“Visionar?”

“I...” That was all she got out before her eyes rolled up in their sockets and she fell forward, only to be caught by Feferi. That couldn't be a good sign. Either whatever this was had some kind of power to counteract Antees or knock her out, or whatever she had seen was far too much for her pan to handle and it had offered her the peace of unconsciousness to compensate. 

“Fef, we need to get you over to...” Eridan started to say, only to have his eyes finally drawn to the scene beyond her. Where the podium had once stood there was a crater that still burned and spewed out thick smoke. Just behind it his guardian, her uniform torn and bloody, knelt by a blackened mass that could only be one thing. 

Nor did the horror stop there. No sooner had Eridan laid his eyes on the grisly sight than the creaking of doors and new motion drew his eyes. Seven trolls were framed in the light of the door, a set of five surrounding one who was a few steps in front of the others, and a second who was half a step behind the central one and just a step to the right. As they strode forward Eridan found himself picking out the little details of the group, how the five in the back were clearly violets arranged as some sort of honor guard. They were of little concern to him, though, as the identity of the other two registered in his pan. The one who seemed to have taken an escort position was a violet as well, one far too familiar to him to be anything other than upsetting to see here. In fact, the only thing that made it worse was the fact that the man—Kythal Ampora, an Enforcer who had been his guardian's kismesis and who shared a name and sign with Eridan—carried an oversized plasma rifle known as Ahab's Crosshairs. Plasma rifles themselves were banned planetside, meant only for work with planetary defenses and defense forces. They were just too destructive to be used on flesh and blood unless there was no other choice. Of course Eridan had been trained in such weapons, along with many others, but even he didn't dare carry one in a place like this. 

Worst of all was the female figure Kythal followed. There was no mistaking the poise and grace of a fuchsia blood, though this was one that Eridan had never met himself. No, the woman who bore the golden, two headed warfork could only be one person, and Eridan trembled in rage to see her. He'd heard stories after all, from Tethys and even the Empress herself. This woman with the dark fuchsia gown and braided hair almost as thick as his waist could only be Veruna. She was a woman out of fable for anyone who wasn't in the closest confidences of the Generali of the Enforcers. To someone like him she was an all too real possibility that had finally reared its head. 

“We've got to move,” Eridan found himself saying, and before the words even registered in his own pan Feferi was standing with Antees in her arms, looking down at him with a mixture of determination and fear filling her eyes. 

“Eridan!” his guardian's voice cut through Eridan's shocked stare up at his moirail, “get the girls to safety!” It took a lot to ignore how her voice hitched with a sob. 

“Eridan,” Feferi repeated, pushing past him to flee into the gathered group of her sisters, still clutching Antees. The yellowblood she passed over to Alrena without a word, then pulled her sisters around her, as much as comforting presence as to protect the Enforcer they had taken into their midst. He had to give it to the girls, even in the worst situation they were brave. 

Feferi's eyes, though, were locked on something over his shoulder, and Eridan was forced to turn and face what she seemed to fear. What he found was a young troll, about his age, coming at him, daggers in her hands. Her face said bloody murder, and her stance said she knew how to dish it out. It was all Eridan could do to draw the sword his guardian had insisted that he always wear in the presence of the Heiress, and face the approaching danger, ready to put himself between his charges and the threat posed to them. No matter what his guardian had said he couldn't flee with the girls now and leave their backs open to an attack.

“Still here, fishy?” the female, cerulean from the look of her eyes, crooned as she approached. The way she was twirling her daggers through her fingers was talented but the kind of thing an amateur knife fighter did. It was a silly mistake that was at odds with the self-control of how she walked and the way her eyes watched him unflinchingly. A show then, along with that too sharp grin, meant to lull him into thinking she wasn't that good. Anyone trained to fight knew how to recognize those that weren't, knew how to pick up the signs, and she was deliberately giving them off. Cunning, and cunning was always a problem in a fight. 

“What do you want, traitor?” he hissed at her as she stopped, more than just outside of his range. Smart. Too smart of a move. 

“Lose your taste for reform, highblood?” the girl quipped, still grinning as she spoke. “Shame. Thought maybe you'd still be harboring some aspirations after all this time. But no, you don't have the shame globes for stabbing your moirail in the back, do you?” 

His eyes must have widened at the words with how her grin morphed into an evil smirk. How could they not, though, when her words were enough to tell him far too much. The only thing that broke him out of the shock was the way the door they had entered through opened and spilled forth Enforcers behind him. They would take out this troll, then carry the Heiress and girls off. Except Eridan couldn't allow that. Wouldn't allow that. There were some fights that one had to handle for themselves. Some betrayals that were just too personal. 

“Vriska,” he greeted her as he slid easily into the defensive stance his guardian had taught him for knife fights. 

“In the flesh, Ampora.”

* * * * * *

His arms were heavier now than in any other moment that he could remember. Before this he might have given that odious honor to the way his whole body felt after one of the three day death swims that Tethys took him on. After those his arms and legs were left so sore that he felt like he would just sleep in his private ablution trap after filling it with hot water and restorative herbs. His guardian said it was important for seadwellers to be able to swim for miles upon miles without stopping, and that such things went doubly so for those meant for the Enforcers. Eridan had never been sure whether or not he agreed, but his guardian had been the Generali of the Enforcers for more sweeps than he could even begin to fathom, and he wasn't about to doubt her word on something like that. After all, seadweller criminals were known to head out to the deep sea, and who knew when he'd be called upon to find one in the line of duty. The fact that he mostly spent his life in Seaedge and Capitol didn't mean he could avoid mastering the very basics of true seadweller life. Living on the land meant he had to work four times as hard at being better than most seadwellers got to in the course of their everynight lives. 

None of that, though, compared to how he felt right here and now. His arms felt so heavy that he was certain their weight was actually causing his facial fins to droop to match. Not that the troll body actually worked like that, those muscles were only even distantly connected to each other, but it felt like a pretty good way to sum up the fact that he was pretty sure that if a buzzsect was to fly at his eyes right that second, he would do little to nothing to try and stop it. Unfortunately that lack of reactivity was going to get him in trouble with his instructor, especially if he let it get between him and the necessary fight. Already he could see that the tip of his battlestaff was dipping just a bit more than was strictly acceptable. All he could do, though, was try to keep the weapon steady and pray that the error wasn't...

As if the thought was the inspiration for the action, his sparring partner suddenly moved forward, their own padded battlestaff easily dancing around his sagging defenses and leaving him with a far from gentle whack upside his head. Bodily fatigue mixed with the blossoming brilliance of his pain and together they left Eridan no options but falling back onto the padded mat. His arms didn't even have the strength left in them to do anything but flop against the mat when they met it, denying his body even the instinctive motions that would cushion the fall. 

“What the glub was that supposed to be?” Tethys demanded of him, the tip of her weapon coming to rest with a loud thump to the side of his head. The damn thing even had the nerve to come down close enough to a delicate facial fin to leave him flinching in fear. “I thought I told you to defend yourself. What's your excuse?”

For a long moment Eridan just rested there on the mat, staring blankly up toward the brushed metal finish of the trainingblock ceiling. There were patterns in the metal above him, swirls and ribs and arcs left by whatever device it was that polished the thing to that kind of shine. What was even the point of that kind of reflection to a surface like a ceiling? It wasn't enough to act as a mirror, and it certainly wasn't enough to bring much more light into the room. It was just there, he suspected, for trainees like himself to get caught up in when they had their fins handed to them on a cushioned platter. 

“I'm tired,” he announced at last, knowing he couldn't duck his guardian's question for long. Maybe he could have gotten away with it were they in any other part of the hive except for her officeblock, but not here. Here they weren't guardian and ward, they were instructor and student. They were commander and cadet. They were master and pathetic excuse for a trainee that could maybe sometimes prove his worth but really couldn't hold up to the excruciating and astronomically high standards that she expected in an eventual successor. 

“Not my problem,” Tethys declared in her Generali tone that all but ordered him back to his feet for another object lesson in why it was important to maintain one's guard even when certain that you were losing sensation in your fingertips. 

He wanted to say that it was, wanted desperately to point out that what she was asking was impossible. Who could meet these kinds of standards when they hadn't slept in three days?

“That's the point,” she snapped at him testily, proving that for all that he couldn't move his arms his mouth was still more than capable of flapping beyond his control when he was tired. 

“I just don't get it,” Eridan said at last, this time intentionally, as he continued to stare at the ceiling and make no move at all for his fallen sparring weapon. “What glubbing use am I supposed to be to anyone when I can barely keep my eyes open, much less my arms up? I mean, I'm going to be the Secondar of the Enforcers some sweep, right? It's not like I'll ever be expected to...”

“You never know what you will and won't be called upon to do,” Tethys corrected him as she moved into his line of sight, resting no small part of her weight on the practice battlestaff as she looked down at him. “There's a reason I've kept you up this long. Have you thought about that?”

“I was considering that you're into...” Eridan trailed off, already feeling his cheeks heating as his blood rose at the thought of what he was going to suggest. There were rumors among the few old retirees who Tethys had brought in to schoolfeed him on everything an Enforcer needed to know that his guardian was into some of the more... creative black relationship interaction methods. Pleasure in inflicting and receiving... Anyway, it wasn't a rumor he wanted to bring up in front of her at any time, much less when she had a weapon in hand. 

“I'll have to discuss appropriate subject matter with Clyide before your next schoolfeeding session,” Tethys mused before sitting down beside him. Well, maybe sitting wasn't quite a graceful enough description of what she did. While never letting her hands leave the battlestaff Tethys had almost slid down it, going from a straight stand into a cross-legged sitting position without ever looking like she was vulnerable to attack. Eridan had to give his guardian something: she was something else entirely. “You're operating under some pretty faulty assumptions here, Eri.”

It had been a long time since she'd she'd called him by that name. Once it had been the only thing she called him in private, now it was such a rarity that even hearing it made Eridan struggle to sit up to prove himself to her. Sometimes he wondered if their relationship had changed too soon, but there was little he could do about it now. They were what they were and he just had to deal with that. 

“Enforcers never stop being off duty,” she continued, as if she hadn't even realized the weight of the name she had chosen for him. “When one binds themself to the badge, who takes the oath, understands that it isn't something they can lay aside just because they want to or think they need to. We become the badge, the uniform, the mindset. That can mean giving our lives to protect others in our off hours. It can mean sometimes doing something by the book that is wrong or doing something right that is against the rules because it is what is necessary and right. It means that every moment we breathe we are bound into protecting others. And something you learn over the sweeps about giving yourself like that is that time and health aren't an issue. It doesn't matter if all your limbs are broken or you haven't slept in nights, you've got to be ready to face whatever comes your way.”

“But...”

“No buts,” Tethys insisted, shaking her head with a sad little sigh. “Eridan... Have I ever told you the story of how I met Gyliea?”

This time Eridan did sit up fully, for all that it made his pan swim from the fatigue. His whole body was screaming for him to sleep, to embrace what it was begging him from, and even happily suggesting that a slab wasn't needed because the training mats were comfortable enough. All of those he pushed aside for a chance to hear this story. It wasn't often that his guardian spoke of where she had come from or who she had been before he had come into the picture. She was a secretive person, perhaps as much for the purpose of protecting the people out of her past that she still cared about, or possibly because there were few of those around anymore, so why dredge up old memories? 

“I was still relatively new to the Enforcers back then. It seems like so long ago. Anyway, I was born and raised and trained in a true ocean city called Oarfoam. You won't have heard of it, so don't bother wracking your pan for details. Except for the algal refineries that create the air scrubbers used in Seaedge and other mid cities like it, Oarfoam wasn't much of a place to be, seadweller or not. Some cities, despite the best efforts of society, don't want to be pulled up, don't want to be improved. They want to live just this side of the line of civilization. It was a place that when people weren't working they were going from job to slab in a drug induced fugue. They did everything, from soporifics to stimulants, from the chemicals that are used to keep deepteethfish from settlements to ground up coral slabs. It made no sense, but that was what it was like. My guardian was a factory worker who took me in after his former wardmate had died in an accident, and I grew up knowing the worst trolls could achieve. Or so I thought. So I joined the Enforcers.

“Down there it isn't about protecting trolls from each other, it's about protecting them from themselves. I was a hard girl, grew up in a hard neighborhood, and was taken in by the Enforcers secretly. I was trained in secret by a long since retired violet who had moved to Oarfoam to liaise for central's drug division. There was suspicion that one of the major Oarfoam dealers was moving product shallower and shallower, into more populated areas. They were giving the worst materials to the Oarfoam addicts, killing them more often than one would have thought acceptable for a business based on making money. Anyway, I was undercover for sweeps. Just another junkie finface that made her way into the affections of a dealer. That is, of course, until Gyliea, the Empress herself, came to Oarfoam to inspect the expansion of the refineries. It was early into her movement to create more mid cities, not to mention the expansion of Seaedge from a suburb of Capitol to a city and culture center in its own right which let sea and landdwellers experience each other's cultures more personally. And no, don't do the math. If I ever hear you guessing how old I am from that information, I will ground you, Enforcer or not.

“Anyway, Gyliea did what... Well, what she's best at...” 

Tethys sighed, and for what it was worth Eridan didn't need more explanation than the sigh. It was the one his guardian reserved for when she was dealing with the Empress making foolish requests of her body guard detail, or of her moirail. To say it was a well known fact that the Empress was prone to ignoring precautions taken for her own safety was a bit of an understatement. Yet the truth was that Eridan had just come to assume that it had a lot to do with Gyliea having a lot of faith in the abilities of her moirail, his guardian, to keep her safe. Apparently it was a bit more than that. 

“The Empress, may she be remembered for peace and prosperity, decided that inspection of the factories alone was below her. One of the things that many may forget is that the fuchsiabloods are indeed seadwellers, because time and time again the violets sent to protect her under in deep cities expect they can swim circles around her. Gyliea shrugged her escort off easily, as a fuchsia is wont to do, and explored a city that was far from what she had been told. Eventually some whalefluke high on thermal baked psychic boosters decided she was a likely mark to get some cash from to pay their dealer. I heard the outraged and indignant demands that he cease and desist from the mouth of a canalway, and went to look in on it, see if I couldn't help somehow. The guy was actually so high that he couldn't tell she wasn't just some other violet down on their luck and living in this place. Gyliea, she didn't have a weapon on her. That was likely the reason she hadn't dealt with the situation herself. Gyliea doesn't like to hurt people if she can avoid it, and so she avoids conflict. But the krillbreath drew a coral carving knife and I had to step in. I hadn't slept in three days, I was on no small amount of caffeine to help simulate the shaky hands and other small signs characteristic of a druggie, and yet looking at her I knew just what I was dealing with. This wasn't some violet, nor some of the more common fuchsias. There was a commanding presence there, a disbelief, a regret in the woman that I could only see as one thing. I grabbed the only weapon I had available to me: a rod of seabar wrapped in coral cement used in deep city hive construction and thus in the dilapidated building next to me, and I thrust myself between the junkie and what could only be my Empress.

“To make a long story a lot shorter, I was tired, worn, and ready to just collapse into a sleepension trap, and I had no choice but to fight. By the end one of my arms wasn't working right because of a terrible cut, I had the coral carving knife sticking out just barely above one of my air bladders, and my hand was torn up from the sharp coral plaster on the seabar. The druggie was slowly floating up before me, dead because I'd had the choice of his life or that of the Empress and myself. And the blood was drawing a pack of deepteethfish. Even then I was ready to keep fighting, despite the fact that I could barely keep in one place in the water.”

“You survived though,” Eridan offered at last, caught up in the story.

“Only because of the Empress. There is this thing about fuchsiabloods... I mean, she just threw out her hair to its full size in the water, flared out her fins as wide as they went, and opened her mouth like a deepteethfish maw to show off her teeth. There must be some pheromone as well to go with it, because the beasts saw her show, turned fin, and fled. She then grabbed me up and before I could explain who I was and why I really needed her to just go about as if I hadn't been there, I was in the midst of her entourage with an Enforcer trained in emergency healthtending seeing to my wounds. They took me back to Capitol with them, and before I knew it I was being trained as an officer and working cases I never would have had below. Within a sweep she had Oarfoam cleaned up due to increased Enforcer presence to overwhelm the dealers, and she kept demanding that I would be on her guard detail every time one was arranged. The moral of the story, of course, was...”

“Don't smoke,” Eridan added in his more sage voice. Tethys jokingly said that the moral to every story that she told was 'don't smoke' and Eridan had chimed in with the moral after every story just out of pleasure of the little secret smile they shared. Of course, seadwellers didn't smoke; it did worse things to a collapsing and expanding bladder based aquatic vascular system than it did to the less complicated pusher-aeration sac system of landdwellers. 

“Yes, and no,” Tethys said, reserving a little smile for him even as she pushed herself to her feet. “The moral is that it doesn't matter who you are, what your position is, or what you think you're supposed to be doing. An Enforcer is always on duty, and has to be prepared for any situation. Sometimes that means flexible thinking. Sometimes it means training in a range of weapons that doesn't make sense to provide for every situation. And sometimes, for trolls like us who swear our lives to the Empress and her kin, it means learning every basic block and attack pattern we can managed with as many weapons as possible under a wider range of conditions than should be feasible. When the life you're ready to give your own for is the voice, face, and power of our world, you have to be able to take any weapon that comes to hand to protect them, even if you're about to fall over from fatigue. You have to be able to deliver a proper block-punch combo even if your leg is broken so badly that your pan can't hold an intelligent thought for the pain you're in. The body has to know how to act when the brain can't. If keeping the Empress or Heiress alive means keeping you from seeing your slab for a few days, then so be it. But until you can do the blocks and counters without thinking despite your fatigue, we're going to keep at it. What do you say to that?” 

As she finished her speech his guardian held her hand out to him, making her opinion more than clear on the subject. Still, it was equally clear that this was a choice, maybe the last one he'd ever be offered. He could either take her hand and commit himself to the pain, suffering, and mindless repetition she needed and expected from him, or he could walk away. Walk away from the Enforcers his pusher had been set on for sweeps, walk away from his oath to protect his moirail, and walk away from all the hope his guardian had come to place in him. 

His grip was strong as his fingers wrapped around her wrist, just as strong as hers, though maybe a bit more hesitant because of the fatigue. Still, he smiled up at his guardian and she smiled back as she gripped his own wrist and helped him haul himself to his feet. 

“I can sleep when I'm dead.”

“That's the spirit! Now, let's do it again.”

All he could do was hope to never need the skills she was offering him, and put his all into learning them anyway. Feferi deserved no less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Closing Notes: Laeris Mavrik belongs to jormungandrising of tumblr. Alrena Mitrea belongs to laceupinrainbow of tumblr (currently lacesweaterpumpkinbow for Halloween).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back. I'm here. Look at me! I've got another chapter for you. Look how pretty and long it is. I hope to keep to this style with Eridan's story. Less predictable updates, but when you get them, you GET them.

“Vriska.”

“In the flesh, Ampora. And I've got to say, you're really doing a lot of my job for me, leaving the fuchsia flock here. So kind.”

The mocking, derisive edge to Vriska's voice was almost enough to set him off all on its own. But that wasn't everything. No, it was the far too clear threat to the young girls in his protection that found Eridan's body moving long before he resolved to do so in his pan. His sword is a bright flash as he lunges forward, his body shifting his weight just right so that when he stopped moving forward his arms did not and they cut fast and deadly toward Vriska's arm. It would have connected, cutting easily through the ceruleanblood's slender arm, were it not for the fact that she reacted with reflexes that could only come from extensive training. Even as she twisted her arm out of reach, her other hand came around, dagger squeezed tightly in a reverse grip. With a limited and efficient movement the blade hit his and knocked his weapon aside. It would have been easy enough to avoid if he'd put more thought into his attack, but as it was Eridan flinched back and tried to calm down and decide how to play this. 

The question, ultimately, came down to two choices. Was he going to kill her here and now, or try and take her prisoner? A brief glimpse around the block told him that the chances of the Enforcers taking any other captives wasn't the most likely thing. There needed to be more information, and Vriska was going to be the source of it if Eridan could help it. His mind finally made up, Eridan threw himself fully into the fight, blade darting in repeatedly to try and break through Vriska's defenses and disarm or disable her. 

They were a dance of strikes and blocks, parries and jabs, and blow upon blow, and Eridan couldn't help but revel in the fact that each strike he made was slowly but surely moving Vriska further away from the gathered fuchsiabloods. She was good, very well trained in truth, but he was better. Far better. Given time this fight would go his way, and he would drag her with them, put her in a dark cell underwater, and make her spill everything. 

Then, without any warning, the feeling of the fight changed. Vriska moved without warning into aggressive movements, ducking under a blow meant to distract her and before Eridan could redirect into a block, her dagger was lashing in toward his gills. Instinct, not training, found him stumbling back a step to protect the delicate tissues. Training took a moment to come back to command, but once Eridan had his legs under him properly he brought his sword down at her head in a two-handed strike, only to have her catch the blow on the hilts of her crossed daggers. That wasn't going to be good, and Tethys was going to yell at him later for letting her get that kind of advantage on him, because Vriska didn't wait to redirect the blow to the side, leaving Eridan off-balance and unable to stop her from getting her daggers to his throat. She had won, and he had failed. Failed Feferi, failed the fuchsias, and failed everything he'd set out to do in his life. 

Why then did he feel like all hope wasn't lost yet?

“Eridan,” she hissed, low and under her breath and Eridan only just barely caught his name. 

“This isn't the time for talk, Serket,” he spat back at her, glaring down at her and just wanting her to get on with it already. Either kill him or leave the opening that some people invariably did that would let him turn this back his way. 

“And yet, here we are,” she countered, voice low and sad for all that it was serious. “Eridan, you have to get the Heiress out immediately. Veruna will have them killed if you remain here.”

“Like you care,” he snapped, even as he was less than sure of his words. “You're trying to...”

Kill the Heiress, right? But the look on Vriska's face, the pure concern and fear in her eyes, spoke words he didn't know how to decode. 

“Save your glubbing life. Just take my word for this. You NEED to get them to safety. Please. They are our future.”

A warning? That made a grand total of zero sense when it came from someone who was pretty much threatening to slit his throat. Still, the whispers, the worry, the reservation, it was everything he would expect from someone who was legitimately on his side.

“Vriska...”

“We've been still too long,” she insisted, cutting him off. “I need you to knock me down. Then look around, notice the approaching force, and command your men to grab the girls and leave, like your guardian commanded.”

“I...”

“Just do it, fish soup pan!” she snapped, and his body moved before his pan could react. His knee thrust into her stomach, her breath coming out just a second early to lessen the blow, and even that didn't stop the audible crack that could only mean he had broken a rib or two in the blow. But that wasn't enough, he knew that it couldn't be enough. There was a feeling, deep down in his gut, that if any of this plan that he didn't understand was going to work, he couldn't leave it with simply a knee. The only thing left to him, as he looked down at his hand, was the sword he was still holding. While he didn't know quite why he did it, Eridan lifted the blade and lashed out, washing his blade cut across Vriska's face, over her multi-pupiled eye, and then pull away coated in blue. Vriska fell away from his blow, his eyes following her motion, and then his vision was drawn toward the still approaching group of enemy seadwellers. 

“Get the girls out of here,” he shouted over his shoulder as he backed away from Vriska. “Now!” 

“Eridan!” Feferi wailed, and almost unthinking he twisted to face her. Her eyes met his, pleading for something that he didn't know how to put into words. Still she was in the midst of the fuchsiabloods, though the other girls were fading away as the Enforcers who had poured from the entrance started to haul them away in their arms. She still held Antees in her arms, clutching the clearly unconscious yellowblood to her chest, and when he saw her like that he almost melted. His moirail, his goddess guarding the weak and weary. All he could do was take her away from the horrors that were visited upon her here and hope to see her alive to the throne. From there, well, from there he had to make sure she stayed safe while he cleaned all of this up. 

“Fef,” he whispered in pity as he ran to her side and hauled her to her feet by her elbow. She struggled to keep Antees carefully cradled in her arms even as she strained not to get tangled in the loose flows of her own gown. When her arm tangled in a trailing scarf Eridan just grabbed the offending fabric and tore it loose. For a moment her face was the picture of regal indignation at the damage to her dress, but Eridan just ignored it and continued to rush her to her feet. “We don't have time for pretty dresses. We have to get the girls out of here and somewhere safe, and they're too scared to go without you.”

The words were just enough, and he knew it long before he said them. Indignation was replaced with a self-assured confidence as she turned on her heels and let two Enforcers rush her through the door, both looking toward the advancing seadwellers and clearly tempted to pull their laserpistols to shoot. 

“The safety of the Heiress is our primary objective,” Eridan snapped at them in the same sort of voice that Tethys always used to get her men to obey without hesitation. Both pushed Feferi forward, looking quite ready to pick her up should he command, but there was a stiffness to their motions that bespoke their distaste for following Eridan's orders even as they left the Empress and Generali behind. Still, they obeyed, sweeps of training and their unflinching certainty that Tethys would have the head of any Enforcer who dared value her life over the Heiress's only serving to speed them along. 

Eridan was the last through the door, left standing there for half a moment has he watched his guardian start to rise to her feet, ready to draw her blade. Again he saw something in her stance that he knew others wouldn't pick up on. The very sight of it made his chest hurt, made tears threaten to fall. There was confidence in her stance, but pain as well. Pain and fury and resignation. It was all he needed to see to be certain of something he had feared since the sound of the explosion. If the Empress wasn't dead yet, she soon would be. There would be no chance to bring in a healthtender in time to save her life. And his guardian, the woman who had given him so much, had no intention of leaving her lost moirail's side.

“Secure the doors,” Eridan commanded as he turned and strode away from the pair who were moving to shut the door behind him. “Buy us as much time as you can, but don't throw your lives away unless there is no other option. No more needless bloodshed.”

It was all so needless. 

“Eridan!” Feferi protested, her face a picture of denial and fear. “The Empress...”

“Is in the Generali's hands,” he countered, keeping his voice as level as possible. She wasn't ready for the news, no more than he was. Unlike him, though, she could be spared from it for a while, and he had every intention of protecting her as long as he could manage. “In the meantime, my orders are to protect you and your sisters. I'll give my life to that end, even if I have to knock you out myself to do it.”

“Feffy,” one of the youngest of the fuchsias whimpered, tugging on the hem of her gown. “I'm scared.”

“I...”

“We have to get you all somewhere safe. The sub-levels. I want five troops in front of them, check every corridor but don't be slow about it. We need to get these girls into the panicblock. Any men you find along the way need to be...”

“Let me lead, sir,” a hoarse voice begged, and then all eyes were on Antees as she struggled out of Feferi's arms. “Please. I...”

“You can barely stand on your own,” Eridan snapped. “I can't...”

“Sir,” another Enforcer at his elbow, a teal by the name of Dysoin if his memory served, cut into the conversation. “Forgive me for interrupting, but if I carry the Visionar in front of everyone else, she could forewarn us of any conflicts that might arise.”

“No,” she whimpered, shaking her head. “I can't... I couldn't... Secondar, sir, I'm expendable. Please, if I go first then...”

“Dysoin, carry the Visionar at the front. Stop for a moment at every intersection and make sure to turn her in every direction. Got it?”

“Yes sir!” the old tealblood confirmed before striding forward and lifting Antees from Feferi's arms. 

“But Eridan!” Feferi protested, and all he could do was shake his head. Somehow, this time, she listened.

“Five in front, with Dysoin. The rest behind. When we come to intersections one from front and back moves to the side until we're clear. I've got the rear. Any complaints can hold it until we get the girls safe. Move out!”

The group moved as quickly as it could, considering that they were limited to the speed that the youngest of the fuchsiabloods could be asked to maintain. Were it not for the security issue it would present, Eridan would have had the others carry the girls with him, but as it was there was only so much that could be reasonably done while still leaving them free to fight if it was necessary. As for Eridan, he found himself in the middle of the throng at Feferi's side, the Heiress refusing to let him more than an arm’s length away from her. That was the worst part, being stuck in the center of a ring of protection, in no place to guard the troll most important to him. He wanted nothing more than to go back into the block and join his guardian in the fight that was clearly going on back there. 

“Who was she?”

And he was no more likely to be involved in that fight than he was likely to have some peace and quiet or a chance to think about what had happened. 

“Who was who?” he asked, even though he knew playing dumb was going to get him nowhere. 

“Don't you coddle me, Eridan. That gill you were angling with. She called out to you. You clearly knew who she was. So tell me who and how you reely know her.”

 

It was a story as complex and confusing as what Vriska had said to him, what she had asked. The only question was just how much he knew and how it all fit together. 

* * * * * *

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]

CA: youre vvriska then

AG: Wow the spam8ots are getting pretty talented these nights. Someone has to applaud the cre8ors of these realistic programs.

AG: So where's the unsu8scri8e 8utton?

CA: vvery funny but im not here to make jokes

CA: are you or are you not vvriska serket

AG: Who's asking? 8ecause if you're a cy8ermarketer I'm going to find a way to make your husktop explode. Trust me, I'm talented like that.

CA: my name doesnt matter all that matters is the fact that wwe need to havve a little talk

CA: and before you get your finger hovvering ovver ovver the block button may i say that the enforcers had your guardian under suspicion for about half a swweep

AG: AAAAAAAALL right, you've got my attention finface. If you're so smart just what did the Enforcers suspect him of?

CA: there wwere more than just a feww reports about abuse of powwer and authority at his production facility

CA: the problem wwas that wwe couldnt get anyone to talk beyond the initial reports

AG: And now you're actually going to suggest that I can work to give you new information a8out Spided that could 8e used on him in future court proceedings.

AG: Well, save your 8reath, 8ait-8er, I've got nothing to say to you or anyone a8out Spided. I made that perfectly clear during the custody hearings on Karkat Vantas.

CA: im not hear about vvantas im here about any of that im here because i havve a hard time believving that a cerulean raised by a hemohierarchist isnt exactly likely to havve gotten by wwithout learning about them

AG: Who says I've got anything to tell you?

CA: im asking not as someone wwith enforcer connections im asking as 

CA: an interested party

* * * * * *

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]

CA: vvris you got a feww minutes

AG: Dammit, Ampora, I'm not here to 8e your sounding 8oard a8out your damn moirail and issues with the system.

CA: this isnt about fef

AG: Your last five messages have 8een 8ugging me a8out your damn pro8lems. Take it to a thinkrapist or just face your 'rail.

CA: dammit i said this isnt about fef

AG: Sure, that's what you're saying. 8ut give it a8out ten minutes and wh8ver you start with will devolve into 8eing a8out her. Anyway, let's just move on. What do you need?

CA: run it by me again

AG: This, in case you're not sure a8out it, is the sound of me sighing. Anyway, it's not all sugar and gum8alls no matter what propaganda the 'archists want to spew.

AG: They talk 8ig a8out the way things work, how it's wrong and 8ackwards and how it should 8e that 'high8loods' that are served 8ecause their lives are longer. That it is a waste to spend their lives in service.

AG: 8ut you know how they do it? 8y 8eing amoral. We're not talking gray morality here, we're talking a lack of it. The only way for them to win that reality is to overthrow, through violence, the current paradigm.

AG: And so they have to strike at those 8elow them, and they feel they have that right. They will kill, they will maim, they will do anything and everything to further their cause.

CA: im not sure theyre entirely wwrong

AG: Here we go. Time to 8ring Fef into this. You've told me a lot a8out her, Eridan, and I sorta met her myself. I understand where you're coming from, 8ut she doesn't seem the sort of troll to just take a hemohierarchist world sitting down.

CA: you dont understand ivve seen her at the end of the night vvris so tired wworn evven and it is all she can do some nights to shuffle into her sleepspension trap because she doesnt havve the energy to make it to her slab

CA: evvery night she givves more and more of herself to this damn system and its already wwearing on her more than you can evven imagine

CA: and shes got swweeps of this in the future swweeps and swweeps and evvery night wweighs on her more

CA: shes my moirail i havve a responsibility to

CA: to

AG: To let her live her own life. Make her own decisions. Make her own mistakes. She is her own person and that is what makes you pity her so much, right?

CA: wwhen you put it like that you sound a bit like a thinkrapist

AG: I've 8een in a serious red relationship with a thinkrapist for a while. Some things ru8 off on you.

AG: And I swear if you make any sort of joke a8out that, I will find you and throttle you, Ampora.

CA: i just wwant her to be happy

AG: And you think this would do it?

* * * * * *

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]

CA: vvris

AG: Oh god not this again!

AG: She's your moirail, and she gave herself willingly into this position. Will you stop 8eing such a minnow a8out this?

CA: the hierarchists do you think they can wwin

AG: You're the Enforcer here, not me. 8ut no, I don't think they can, Eridan.

CA: wwhy

AG: 8ecause there are trolls out there, trolls like you and me, who won't let them. For the sakes of the ones we care a8out. For Feferi, for Kanaya, for everyone we know. We won't stop until they lose.

CA: you sure you dont wwant to join up wwith the enforcers

AG: Still no. So flop off little fishy and leave the land pro8lems to me.

arachnidsGrip [AG] ceased trolling caligulasAquarium [CA]


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah... Time to torture Eridan more. Are you guys enjoying the flashback system? Does it begin to make you realize just what current we are fighting?

“Don't you coddle me, Eridan. That gill you were angling with. She called out to you. You clearly knew who she was. So tell me who and how you reely know her.”

“You should know her,” he said at length, or at least half a length down the hall after the question was asked. “Her name is Vriska Serket. She was one of the wards involved in that custody case against Spided Ryicos, the one involving Seborn's new ward, Karkat Vantas?”

“You weren't involved in that case,” Feferi snapped at him. They both knew it wasn't because she was really mad, but because she was upset. The whole situation was a series of chaotic stabs to the feelings, and Fef wasn't the best at handling those. How he wished he had about an hour or three free to just sit her down on her giant clamshell slab, covered with all of her cuddlefish plushes and just talk it out. But that was nowhere near happening, and instead he had to take the bad with the even worse right now. 

“How could you possibly know her?”

There was a question he wasn't answering. You weren't supposed to keep anything from your moirail, but this definitely wasn't the situation to inform Fef that there had been a point where he had sympathized with the hierarchists in the hopes that their misguided ideals would make her own life easier. She'd hate him for it, blame him for everything here, and... And he couldn't handle that or anything like that right now. 

“Fef, I'm an Enforcer. More than that, I'm the Secondar,” he started, because it was far easier to claim the position he had than the position he knew he would have by the end of the day. He'd seen the plasma rifle, he knew that Tethys and Kythal had the worst sort of falling out when he was very young, and he knew that he had replaced Kythal in the hierarchy. There was no reason for Kythal not to go for her, and in her grief Eridan wasn't sure his guardian could stand up to such a weapon. “After the accusations raised by Vriska Serket and Remium Olisar, there had to be investigations. An allegation of hemohierarchy isn't something taken lightly. I was sent to do interviews to ascertain where we might find evidence in one direction or the other. I encountered Serket then; there were more than a few conversations.” 

The look Feferi gave could be described quite simply as unsure. Well, maybe not unsure, but doubtful enough that Eridan couldn't help but worry she'd ask him more later. Oh well, that wasn't a conversation for now, and he didn't care about it. 

“Why was she...”

“I wasn't exactly gentle in the questioning. The case had upset you quite badly, and thus upset me. I guess Serket took it personally,” he offered, and then turned his attention to Dysion at the front of the group. “When we get in, we lock down immediately. I'll leave a group with you, but after that I need to move out with most of the men. We need to gather what forces are available here and take back the grandballblock.”

There was a grunt of agreement from the front of the group, and a barely concealed snarl of frustration from Feferi. She understood, had come to know many times over the years, that when Eridan used that tone he was in full on Enforcer mode, something that often overrode even their pale quadrant. An Enforcer had obligations to others before themselves, and before those most tied to them. But from the silent way she squeezed his hand, it was enough to silence her for now. The uncomfortable conversations could be saved for later. 

“WHERE THE MOTHERFUCK IS SHE!?” a voice demanded as Dysion thrust a large set of doors open before them, and Eridan was certain he could feel the floor shaking under his feet. There went the hope for no more uncomfortable conversations. 

“Eri...” Feferi started to whimper as he pulled his hand from hers and pushed his way through the Enforcers and fuchsiabloods. Whether it was a protest or warning he wasn't sure, but by the time he reached the fore of the group he was certain which one he would prefer to think about it as. After all, who didn't need a warning when facing down a furious purpleblood with their full growth?

“Adjustor Seborn, stand aside” Eridan barked out in his best commanding tone. Of course he wasn't sure whether fear or habit of obeying commands given in such voices made Goatad Seborn stand aside. Immediately Eridan turned his back to the purple, further asserting his right to control the situation, and tried to put the clearly seething rage of the purpleblood behind him as far from his pan as possible. That would have to be dealt with the second he had this room secure.

“Dysion, this is the closest thing I can give you to a secure location at the moment,” he continued as the doors were slammed behind their party and immediately started to be barricaded by the other Enforcers. “Do not open those doors to anyone other than myself or those Enforcers you are personally sure of. If you manage to raise a group of fifteen men, I want you moving the girls deeper into the palace. The Empress's chambers have a panic room, Feferi will know where. They are to be shut in there with a small guard and the door should not be opened to anyone who does not give you the keyphrase.”

“What is the keyphrase, sir?” Dysion responded, not even questioning what must have felt like strange orders.

“For today, it will be 'glub deeply.' After midday we'll change to 'glide high.' After that... Well, if I'm not back by then I leave everything to your discretion. The safety of the Heiress and her sisters is of supreme importance. Nothing else matters right now. Understood?”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Good. Antees, you're staying with Feferi, no matter what. You've likely already saved her neck once today, and I want you to beat that record if the opportunity presents itself,” Eridan continued as he stared down the yellowblood in Dysion's arms. For a moment it looked like Antees was going to protest, but then her eyes unfocused in the way they did when she was looking forward. She must have seen no success for her argument, because she just nodded and allowed Dysion to lower her into a chair after being dismissed with a brief gesture. 

“As for the rest of you,” Eridan called, turning the attention of every Enforcer in the room to him, “we're splitting up. I want out best two shots to stay with the Heiress and Dysion. The rest of you are with me. We're heading back after a run by the nearest armsblock.”

“I won't have you motherfucking ignoring me BOY,” Goatad's voice finally roared out from behind him, and then Eridan's feet weren't touching the floor. The fabric of his uniform coat was already tightening painfully against his throat as he was dangled by the coat hood, and he was certain he could feel blood welling up from where the metal teeth of the zipper were clawing at his skin. The Enforcers around him were all reaching for their weapons, even Antees, only to stop at a small twitch of Eridan's fingers commanding them to stand down. 

“Let him go.”

Her voice wasn't loud, it wasn't sharp, it wasn't even commanding. No, it was just a whisper, one filled with pain and yet certainty that it would be obeyed. Strangely it sounded more like Feferi was inviting Goatad to release him than commanding it. She had every right to command, he was her moirail, she was the Heiress, she had a claim on his life. What was more and what nearly everyone in the room knew was that she was the Empress in effect, if not in fact. But it was enough. Had to have been enough, because Eridan felt his feet touch the floor and slowly his body seemed to sag down, carried on its own strength once more. Without even flinching he turned on heel and stared up at Goatad's eyes, meeting the rage and wrath with every bit of cool control and confidence that he could manage. 

“You're angry, you're upset, and it's fucking logical,” he started, pitching his voice low so only they could hear it. “But here's the thing, Seborn. You're not the only one. She was... is... No. She was going to be your matesprit. The loss of her is a pain that you won't forget any time soon. I understand that on an intellectual level even if I've never felt it myself. I'm truly sorry about this. But you're not the only one hurting right now. Feferi lost something more. She lost her guardian, she lost her mentor, and she lost her innocence tonight. She nearly lost her life, and that is still up in the air. More likely than not I've lost a lot of what she has, though if I'm lucky my guardian is going to take as many of them down with her as possible. For now, though, there is only so much that we can do. There is only so much you can do. Right now, you can either choose to keep having an emotional fit that gets us nowhere, or you can comfort and protect the only one here likely grieving as much as you are.”

They were left standing there for another minute, just staring at each other. It wasn't hard to see that there was no small part of Goatad that wanted to punch him for failing the Empress, for daring to talk down to him, for being there when he was grieving. Eridan just stood there, waiting, ready to take the blow if it was truly what he needed to do to make sure that the awesome force of an enraged purpleblood was there to protect his Heiress, his Empress, his Feferi. Who knew just what would have come from their silent showdown if one of the far doors that hadn't yet been blockaded banged open and the Enforcers rushed headlong for the entrants. 

“Stand down!” Eridan shouted as, after turning to face the open doors, he discovered who had entered. “Let them in. Dammit I said let them the glub in! What are you, addlepanned? That's Zahhak and Makara!”

While the second name didn't seem to ring any fucking bells with most of the Enforcers, they did halt when faced with that of Equius Zahhak. Two even nearly jumped back a few steps to dodge out of the way as Equius rushed past them. Feferi went so far as to separate herself from the rest of her entourage so no one was in the range of the too-strong troll as he crossed the room in what seemed like a single bound and scooped her up into his arms. It would have even been a touching sight if it had been any troll other than Equius had been in Feferi's red quadrant. Still, Equius was holding her close, whispering something, and Feferi, though crying, seemed a bit better. For now, for this, he couldn't do anything for her himself, so he had no choice but to let it go. 

“What all the motherfuck is up and going on?” Gamzee asked as he came to a stop beside Eridan and his guardian. “When all that fucking shit went down on the screen, well, our wicked motherfucker went all psycho drone and tried to get to ya'll”

“It is what it is,” Eridan sighed. “Gamzee... I've got to get out there and save as many as possible. Can you...”

“You ain't got an ice cube's chance at noon in leaving me motherfucking here,” Gamzee growled under his breath, and Eridan had to turn to stare at him in shock. He hadn't known Gamzee to get so upset over something, and yet the look in his eyes was something like madness. There was a fire, a rage so deep that Eridan shuddered to think of what Gamzee would have done to him in Goatad's place.

“You're a civilian,” Eridan started to protest, only to find Gamzee moving toward a nearby wooden table. The purpleblood ignored him completely, grabbing the table by a leg and literally ripping the wood free. Makeshift club in hand Gamzee turned back to stare at him once more with those crazy eyes. 

“My motherfucking kismesis is out there, and I ain't even up and letting someone else lay a fucking finger on her pointy ass face.”

Again he tried to protest, only to have Goatad's huge hand land on his shoulder to restrain him. Great, this was just going swimmingly. 

“Don't argue with him,” Goatad warned. “There is a lot you don't know about my motherfucking ward, and his temper is one of those things. He'll go with or without your fucking ass. Better you up and take him with you.”

Eridan swallowed hard, staring at the crazy eyed troll wielding a table leg before him. It looked like he didn't have much of a choice.

“He any good in a fight?” he asked at last, hoping Goatad wouldn't answer, because truly he didn't want to know.

“He almost killed Spided Ryicos with his own fists when he found out the bastard beat Karkat.”

Well, at least there was that. A troll with that kind of strength and something to fight for was something he wanted with him at a time like this. His only hope was that he could control the monster whose leash was being handed over to him. 

* * * * * *

“You're not allowed in here.”

The indigoblood pouring over a sketchpad didn't even bother to look up when Eridan spoke. Honestly, it wasn't too surprising. He was used to people ignoring him. Mostly it was because he was still young enough that his voice was high and squeaky so they didn't quite understand who they were talking to. They didn't realize that he was the ward of the Enforcer Generali, that someday he was going to follow in her shoes as it were. One day he would have authority over nearly everyone he had ever met, and they would jump when he ordered. They would understand that it was because he was a strong troll bound to protecting the Heiress. But it was more than just frustrating when trolls that were around his own age that just brushed him off. At least adults had the defense of not knowing any better. 

“I said, you're not allowed to be here,” he repeated, trying to put authority into his voice. The only thing he got was that his voice didn't crack as badly as it might have otherwise.

“And I ignored you because I doubt you have any say in what I can and can't do,” the large troll looked up from his sketchpad only momentarily, leaving Eridan facing an impenetrable pair of sunglasses covered with cracks. “So leave me alone.”

“I'm an Enforcer cadet!” Eridan protested angrily. It wasn't entirely true. He was only barely and tangentially a trainee. Still, he knew that no one without proper authorization was allowed to be here without an escort. He, of course, had authorization, being the Heiress's moirail and all that. Who was this, though, to sit in the waitingblock as if he belonged there?

“Let me see your credentials,” the indigo insisted, moving to set his pad aside and standing. He was tall, really tall, and looked really strong. His shirt lacked sleeves, maybe so he could show off his muscles, which were just insanely big for a troll his age. Not that Eridan could say for sure what 'his age' was; maybe only a sweep older than him, maybe five. With some trolls it was hard to tell, and this guy totally counted as one of the ones that it was hard to tell with. And it didn't help that he was so much bigger, and so much more intimidating. 

“You're not the boss of me,” Eridan said after a minute, and he knew he sounded petulant. That was the word Tethys used when she wasn't happy with him being snarky. She said it was disrespectful, but he wasn't sure this indigoblood deserved any respect. He had no business being here, outside of Feferi's respiteblock. “And I know you can't be here. I know all the kids who have permission, and you're not one.”

“Stop acting important, fishface,” the indigo snapped, gritting his teeth. Eridan watched as he tensed his muscles and the troll started to, inexplicably, sweat. 

“Fishface!? How dare you call me that? You... You sweatlicker!”

“Sardine breath.”

“Fish bait!”

“Both of you are idiots!”

Eridan froze at the sound of his moirail's voice, and he hated the way that the indigoblood did as well. Clearly there was something there, some recognition in his stance, something that said he knew just who was yelling at them. How dare he know Feferi? Didn't he know that the Heiress wasn't supposed to interact with such scum as this troll obviously was? 

“Your majesty,” he said after a moment, turning to execute one of the flawless bows that his guardian had him practice time after time until he was certain he could do it with both legs broken and his eyes closed. It always made Feferi giggle when he did that. She didn't like the seriousness people had when they spoke to her. They forgot she was a kid like her sisters, someone still growing up and likely to watch kids’ shows and eat all the cereals that were bad for her and not have responsibilities. 

“I'm not in the mood for you to be finny, Eridan!” Feferi snapped, storming past him in a way only the Heiress could. Her skirts swirled around her like water as she swept right up to the stranger and grabbed his arm. “Don't pay any attention to him, Equius. He's just self-importanting at you!”

“Fef...” Eridan gasped, shocked not only by her words but by her touching the stranger. Equius? Just who was he supposed to be anyway? 

“Why do you always have to be so mean?” she demanded, pouting in that way that he could only see as being genuine. “If you can't be nice to my matesprit then I don't want to glub with you until you can!” 

Eridan was left standing there as Fef walked away, dragging the strange indigoblood into her respiteblock with her. When the door shut behind them with a loud thump he didn't know what to do with himself. Had Feferi just really shut him out? Matesprit? No one their age had matesprits. Especially not a fuchsia blood. She would outlive everyone currently alive on this planet, save possibly her sisters. Choosing a matesprit now would only break her in the long run. How could the Empress allow this? How could anyone allow some strange, sweaty indigoblood to just wander around the palace as if he owned the place? How could Feferi choose that... that... landdweller over him?

As he stood at the unopening door all he could do was hope this wasn't going to last very long. 

* * * * * *

“Why the motherfuck are you staring at him like that?”

“Huh?” Eridan asked, turning his attention from the couch where Feferi and Equius sat together, her half in his lap and laughing uproariously at some joke he'd told. When he did turn away he found Gamzee staring at him, looking what could only be described as annoyed. Well, as annoyed as the laid back troll ever got. It meant that Gamzee's eyes were narrowed rather than drooping, and instead of sagging back into his seat he was actually sitting up straight. 

“I said, why the motherfuck are you all up and staring at the wicked brother?” 

Eridan sighed as he sat back in his seat. “It isn't any of your glubbing business.”

Gamzee shook his head and leaned back himself. “Just trying to wrap my pan around why you up and hate someone so awesome as Equius.”

“He isn't wonderful,” Eridan spat, glaring over his shoulder toward where Feferi and Equius were. The laughing had stopped so they could just cuddle together, their foreheads as carefully pressed together as people with difficult horn shapes tended to do. “He's a self-important sanctimonious hoofbeast lover who thinks he's good enough for the Heiress and isn't fit to breathe the same air as her.”

“Woah,” Gamzee cooed low and long, “seems like a wicked brother up and got his jealousy on. Shit my motherfucker, don't you even know he ain't got no pale aspirations on our wicked sis? She's all up and flushing for that boy hard. Falling like the miraculous rain.”

“Exactly the problem,” Eridan grumbled, crossing his arms across his chest and flaring out his facial fins in irritation. “What does she even see in...”

“He's got a good pusher,” Gamzee offered, smiling widely. “Motherfucker up and gave his life to helping other people. I mean, he's this savant or something, making people legs and arms so they can up and live lives they ain't been able to get to because of how they got hurt or being born wrong or something. How can't you respect that? That is true service. I hope I can...”

“If you say you want to be like him, I swear I'm going to punch you, Gamzee,” Eridan snarled, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I...”

“Shit, you're pitching with him, aren't you?” Gamzee cut in, discomfort flashing across his face. “Oh man, just up and leave me the fuck out of this shit.”

* * * * * *

“Don't think just because you're wearing that uniform means I won't punch you if you think you're going to come between me and her,” Equius growled, his voice low and rumbling. 

“You think you scare me?” Eridan snarled right back at him, eyes narrowing and facialfins quivering with his rage. “You may be big and strong, but I've taken down way better than you.”

“I'd like to see you try,” the indigoblood came back, his muscles bulging as his fists clenched and prepared themselves for a fight. 

“That is motherfucking it!” a voice cut in as a meaty hand came down heavily on his shoulder. Eridan couldn't help but flinch as the fingers clenched painfully into his skin, which could only mean one thing mixed with that voice. 

He and Equius had made a big mistake: they had roused the rage of one of the few trolls who could stop them in their tracks. One of the few trolls who made a violetblood like Eridan seem almost pathetic in a fight.

“This isn't your conflict,” Equius announced in that imperious way that he had picked up from sweeps around Feferi. Eridan knew he did that sometimes too, but he'd had the repercussions of such arrogance beaten into him enough on trainingblock floors that he had tried to stop it. 

“Gamzee, just let me punch his face in,” Eridan asked more than commanded, knowing it would go over better with Gamzee. “I won't leave too many marks. Just enough to let Fef see through...”

“I said that is MOTHERFUCKING it!” Gamzee shouted, and as he did the hand on Eridan's shoulder tightened. “I am so motherfucking up and tired of this shit you two be pulling. I won't listen to this shit any more. Sweeps… sweeps you two have up and had a chance to work out your fucking shit. Feferi deserves better than either of you, with how you idiots behave. The Heiress deserves support and affection and something better than you two motherfuckers!”

“This...” Equius repeated, and then went to his knees when Gamzee clearly tightened his grip. Eridan could have told him it was a bad idea to cross the purpleblood. After all, he had access to the reports about what Gamzee had done to Spided Ryicos when he suspected the blueblood of abusing his matesprit. He knew that Gamzee was the chief motivator behind the whole case regarding the wardship of Karkat Vantas. Hell, he even knew, though he wasn't going to share the source of his information, about the fact that Gamzee had a bit of a rage control problem that only made his natural purpleblooded strength even further. Crossing him was the worst idea that a troll could have, and Eridan was certain that somenight it would be the last thing someone did. 

“No more,” Gamzee repeated, his voice low and deadly. “You two shape up your motherfucking acts now. Feferi needs stability. And you're going to give it to her. Before you get any of this stupidity up in your fucking pans again, you come to me. You want to punch each other, you come to me. You want to tear the walls down, you come to ME. No more of going at each other's throats. Understand?”

Part of Eridan wanted to laugh as he nodded in agreement. This was the first time he'd heard of something like this. The first time that someone had brought themselves into the auspitice role by threat. Of course it was also the first point, to his knowledge, that an Heiress had her redder quadrants going dangerously black for each other. Apparently it was a time on Beforus for a lot of firsts. All he could hope for was that Gamzee knew what he was doing. That, when it came right down to it, he could keep Equius and him from killing each other when the cards were down. 

Hopefully they'd never need it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here it is. I'm going on winter break to visit family quite soon, and this will be the last chapter you get for a brief time. I'm hoping to finish a side-fic based on Tethys soon, but mostly Sollux will be taking a break until midway through January. So hopefully this will tide you over until the next chapter.

He played it by the book, even though every moment spent checking rooms they pass, scouting intersections, and making their way slowly and silently was almost painful to think about. No, it was painful to think about it because he knew that every moment spent sneaking and prowling was another moment he was expecting his guardian to hold things on her own. Tethys was good, but he knew as well as she did that she wasn't that good. There were unreasonable odds he was certain she could manage, but an ex-kismesis with a plasma rifle and a squadron of violet and purple bloods hell bent on violence and chaos had to be beyond even her. 

_No, you are not allowed to think that_ , he snarled at his own traitorous mind as he held up and hand to stop the assembled Enforcers behind him. Almost all of the sound behind him immediately stopped as the Enforcers came to an abrupt halt. Almost being a key word, as Gamzee didn't understand the hand sign, and yet again bumped into him. It took a lot not to growl, there was no point to taking his frustration out on Gamzee, especially not with the mood the purpleblood was in. He could almost feel Gamzee's breathing down his back in a barely controlled and razor sharp rage. 

It had taken them an insufferably long ten minutes to make it to the armory, and another three to secure it, arm up—where had Gamzee even found that club in the mass of swords, pistols, and other traditional armaments—and get back into the halls. There had been another two minute long debate over whether or not to send a pair of his people back with a load of weapons for the Heiress's defense detail, and ultimately he sent back a lone troll with a bag loaded down with weapons.

That was so long ago that he could barely even stand to try and do the math or look at his watch. He honestly didn't want to know just how long it was, just how much time he'd wasted because he was doing everything exactly the way he was supposed to do it. The only thing that kept him going was the fact that he was positioned to the side of one of the entrances to the grandballblock and waiting, pistol in hand, for what came next.

A few quick gestures and the two Enforcers at the end of his line slipped forward, one moving to grasp the handles of either door. With his free hand, he counted down.

Five. His muscles tensed, but he was careful enough not to squeeze the trigger.

Four. Already his mind is playing out different scenarios for what will happen when the door opens.

Three. A moment taken to check his weapon to make sure it was ready.

Two. _Breathe, just remember to breathe, Eridan. You can't shoot well if you're holding your breath. Just shoot on the exhale._

One.

The doors swung open before his finger was all the way down, and Eridan was the first through, Gamzee close at his side. He made it through just in time to see the back of Veruna as she strode confidently from the grandballblock, her back covered by the menacing bulk of Kythal Ampora. All he could do was stare as Kythal slammed the doors behind them, leaving him standing there with his mouth gaping.

“Motherfuck,” Gamzee growled. Eridan couldn't help but agree as his eyes cast around the room: it was filled with the crumpled bodies of trolls, or those crouched nearby and looking over their fallen comrades. In places he could see splashes of blood, more often than not those 'lower' than purple, though there were distinct flows of blood around the entrances where he could see the bodies of the few fallen Enforcers present. There were far less than he would have wanted to see; far, _far_ less, because every absence of the black and white dress uniform meant another troll he had thought he could trust simply because he thought they were brother and sisters in the law, but who had betrayed him and everyone here.

“Sir...” a voice came from his side, and Eridan grit his teeth and turned to face those loyal Enforcers behind him.

“Call every nearby healthstem. The nearest Enforcer divisions as well. We need every possible body here that can help. I want every Enforcer in the building not on Heiress protection duty fortifying this area, I want this place secure until we get help. Three of you with emergency healthtender training start triaging everyone you see. I want the worst cases moved closest to the main doors. Arrange them further and further away. If anyone is carrying quadrant tokens matching those of sicker trolls, allow them to assist and stay close. Warn them that anything short of obeying direct orders from healthtenders and uniformed Enforcers will have them removed from their quads. And no one that was in this room is allowed to leave without a healthtender taking them and us getting receipt of where they are going and whatever identification we can manage. We need all the details we can get on what happened here, and I'm not letting one possible witness with one minor detail away if they can bring light on all of this.”

With that he strode off, knowing that the other Enforcers would instantly disperse to carry out his commands. They already knew everything he was telling them, but it was the act of telling that set them about the necessary motions. Gamzee, of course, didn't even wait for Eridan to finish, instead all but bolting off into the crowd to find his missing kismesis. Eridan wished him luck in that endeavor, but like those under his command he had his own job to complete. One that awaited him across the room, by the mangled and ruined mess that once was a platform constructed expressly for tonight's events.

Wreckage, he decided as he ascended the stairs of the platform, wasn't quite the right term to describe the setting he was met with. The planks that made the temporary dais were more than just charred, they were shattered by the force of the explosive device that had destroyed the podium. There were shards and splinters of wood scattered everywhere, something he knew he would find from the myriad of shrapnel related injuries he encountered on his way toward the podium. Of course the ones he had seen further out had been smaller pieces of wood. Here he was treated to the sight of long, slender slivers of wood nearly as long as his forearm, pieces often lodged into the walls or above in the ceiling. If there was one blessing to this at all, it was the fact that the Heiress and other fuchsiabloods had been more than just to the side of the podium, but behind it to a degree as well. It had meant less of the wooden missiles had flown in their direction, that they were unhurt. At least, none of them had complained in the flight toward safety, but he knew that he hadn't really taken the time to look any of them over except for Fef, and even that had only been in passing. For all he knew his moirail was bleeding out at this very moment and there was nothing he could do about it.

His eyes lingered over the destruction as long as they could manage because it was easier than looking at what rested behind what had once been a hand carved podium that had been a gift of a master carpenter to an Empress two or three generations back. He'd always loved that thing, the way that the wood grain and carvings together had evoked the image of a sea on the edge of a storm. That was always the way he had loved the ocean. Calm was well and good, and storms were always fun because there was little as exhilarating as frolicking with Feferi just below the surf in the worst storms. Even though he would never be as strong of a swimmer as her, he still loved to feel the tension and fury of the waves, especially when he knew she would be there to help if he lost control.

 _Dammit, stop avoiding what's right in front of you_ , a small voice in the back of his pan reprimanded him. It sounded half of Tethys and half of Feferi, but entirely filled with his own pain and spite. But the voice was right. He was hiding, and he needed to stop. He was needed, and letting people down now was hardly something he could manage for the memory of... No. Don't think about that, it would be all too real all too soon. Minutes, at most, but even that was far enough away for him to swallow the pain and keep moving.

Somehow, even in death Empress Gyliea was regal. Maybe it was just his pan trying to protect him, filling in the blanks that he didn't want to see, but maybe it was just something about the fuchsiablooded that left trolls in awe of them no matter the pains visited upon them. And, make no mistake, there were pains visited upon the still form of the late Empress. Much of the careful creation of Gyliea's dress was either charred, tattered, or caked with her own blood. None of that, though, compared to the Empress herself. The burns on her arms were viciously black and cracking like overcooked meat, and the scent that rose off of her body was enough to make him gag. It took digging his nails into his palm to keep from being sick then and there. There was no greater disrespect he could show the Empress than being anything less than reverent to the fallen woman.

The worst part, he decided as he moved to kneel by the once great troll, was the three gaping holes in her chest. Apparently the explosion hadn't been enough for Veruna. The marks weren't from any explosion, they were clearly left by a sharp weapon. By the large, golden warfork that Veruna had carried. While he had fled the traitorous bitch had strode up here unhindered and stabbed an already dying woman.

“Motherfuck...” Gamzee's voice whispered, once again from his shoulder. How it was possible that the large purpleblood managed to be so stealthy was beyond Eridan's understanding, but he tried to take it in stride.

“Feferi should never have to see this,” Eridan found himself answering. Not that he was sure quite how he was going to protect her from this.

“That wicked sister is all up and stronger than she seems,” Gamzee assured him, placing a meaty hand upon his shoulder. “Still, if that is what you need, then I will motherfucking provide.”

Before he could react there was a rustling of fabric, and Gamzee's black and jade vest was draped over the suddenly frail looking form of the Empress. As large as Gamzee was, though, the vest was barely enough to cover the torso of the Empress. It did nothing at all to hide her mangled legs, both clearly broken in several points with bits of bone pushing through the skin. Now, with the fatal blow covered, Eridan couldn't begin to look away from those ruined legs, and wonder if she ever would have been able to walk again, even if she had survived the explosion itself. Then, before he could rise to shed his uniform coat to cover the Empress's legs, a long crimson and teal coat was draped carefully over them. The unexpected colors made Eridan's head snap around to look at Gamzee, and he was met with not only Gamzee's tall, lanky form, but that of a shorter woman with tousled hair, horns like primitive spear tips, and startlingly crimson shades that were cracked and missing part of the left lens.

“Who...” he started to ask as he rose, but Gamzee just shook his head and with a single gesture stopped Eridan in his tracks. It was a simple motion, just a raised arm and elongated finger, and yet it was everything Eridan needed to break his feigned cool. His eyes were torn from the interloper and followed Gamzee's outstretched arm to see a vision so terrible that it actually tore a barely restrained sob from where he had been squashing it down in his stomach.

“Tethys,” he gasped. He was kneeling at her side, even though he couldn't remember moving. Nor does he remember reaching out to touch her, but his hands are sticky and wet with a shade of violet that could only be her blood. Strangely there isn't much of it, at least not as much as he was certain there should have been. Shouldn't her body have been a mess of blood? There was a gaping hole in her stomach, so wide he could have put Gamzee's fisted hands through her torso, yet there was barely any blood around the wound.

“Plasma rifle,” a sharp female voice observed sadly from behind him, and as he looked down, Eridan knew it was true. The wound was characteristic of what he'd seen in his lessons on a far smaller scale. Few people carried plasma rifles quite as large as the one known as Ahab's Crosshairs, most plasma weapons being more pistol sized and lacking quite the destructive power displayed here. Plasma bolts were so hot that when they cut they burned as well, almost instantaneously cauterizing wounds. It was a blessing in some ways, and a curse in others. It meant that a victim was less likely to bleed out if their arm was shot off, but it also meant reattaching things was quite difficult. Not that either of those really applied to Tethys.

She fell with her weapon in hand Eridan noted. Brave, right until the end, that was his guardian. Of course she was only armed with her favorite sword, a blade called Wave's Edge that had been gifted to her by Gyliea shortly after she came to head he Enforcers. There really hadn't been a chance for her, had there? Kythal was never going to let this be a fair fight, but at least Eridan could take pleasure in the splashes of violet and purple blood on the steel of the weapon. Some corner of his pan said he'd stepped over a few bodies to reach his fallen guardian's side, but he wasn't entirely sure he believed that. Still, the blade didn't lie. Carefully, hesitantly, he worked the weapon free of her already stiffening hand. There was an indignant gasp from behind him, and an exasperated sigh.

“She was his guardian,” Gamzee explained, and Eridan just ignored it so he could work the sheath from Tethys's belt. In the end, though, he found himself forced to cut it free, because he couldn't bring himself to move his guardian, to disturb her rest.

The hole in her chest almost seemed to look up at him, full of accusation. All he could do was try to stay strong in the sight of it, to keep moving. Stopping here wouldn't help anyone, there was more work to be done. Running from that now would only disappoint someone who had always believed in him. No, there was work to be done and he had to keep moving. But with the hole staring at him it was almost hard to breathe.

Of course the answer was right there in front of him, or maybe it was really behind him. Like Gamzee before him, Eridan rose and shed his uniform coat. With a sort of reverence that he couldn't explain he gently spread his coat over the woman who had taken so much pleasure, so much pride, in presenting him with the coat.

“She's in a better motherfucking place,” Gamzee offered.

Eridan didn't agree.

 

* * * * * *

 

“Eridan!”

The sound of his guardian's voice all but launched Eridan off of the couch and through the door of his respiteblock. Tonight was the night he had been waiting for, and with his guardian's return came a moment of truth. Something he had been striving toward for more sweeps than he cared to remember. Ever since he had laid his eyes upon Feferi when he was younger he had set himself upon this path, and tonight decided whether or not he would really make it. Tonight his test results were in.

“Eridan!” Tethys's voice echoed from the hivecomm speaker once more as Eridan reached the top of the stairs.

It would take too much time to run down them, he decided, and as he reached the edge he vaulted over the banister, thrust his arms before him, and honkbird dived into the deep water of the lower level of their hive with as much grace as he could muster in his excitement. As he passed easily into the water and arched his body to curve back to the surface of the water he mentally gave himself an eight out of ten on the rating scale he and Feferi had created in their boredom almost a sweep and a half ago. She'd be kinder with the rating, no doubt, but he had to be honest with himself. He was never the natural in the water that Feferi and her sisters seemed to be. Still, he was good enough, and it was the matter of a purely instinctual undulation of his body to rise to the surface and glide through the water toward the distant, aquatic entrance to their hive. After all, that was the only entrance she would bother to use the comm from. Anywhere above water and her voice could easily be heard even in the deepest parts of their home. It was solely below the waves that she needed the amplification.

He found her in the only place that made sense considering what this had to be about. Sure enough he found Tethys drying off in the land portion of the entertainmentblock, squeezing the excess water from her hair while trying not to get said hair tangled into the arms of her shades. Yet it wasn't the almost routine way that his guardian went about drying herself that drew his attention. No, it was the waterproof package clenched under one of her arms. So they were here, they were finally here. His testing results...

“Well?” he asked, lifting himself from the water and accepting the large towel she offered him.

“Sit down, Eridan. It's time we had a talk.”

It wasn't like her to dodge questions; if Tethys didn't want to answer something she would plainly inform him that it was classified information if it was, or she would ask him to give her time before she would feel comfortable with answering. Eridan knew that was strange that their relationship worked like this; that it wasn't traditional for a guardian to treat their ward more like a friend or companion than someone they were guiding and teaching. Her Secondar had once had words with him while she was cooking for the 'casual' way he spoke with her, only to have Tethys shout him down and assure Eridan that he was still encouraged to treat her as he always had. Yet here she was, for one of the first times since she had begun training him, sounding more like a guardian than a mentor.

“Of course, ma'am,” he answered before spreading the towel over the tile of the floor and arranging himself comfortably on it. There was little worse than the smell of the couch when it was wet, and they had long since agreed that they wouldn't risk the scent just for comfort. “Are those my results?”

Tethys took the package in her hands and frowned at it as she sat down, not across from him like usual, but beside him on the edge of his towel. After a moment she set the item aside, far from his reach, and threw an arm around his shoulders.

“What...” he found himself turning to look at her, and for what felt like the first time in his life he was met with an unobstructed view of his guardian's eyes.

“Eridan, the contents of that package are going to change your life forever,” Tethys started, her voice halfway between tired and wary. “If you find what you think you want then you're committing yourself to centuries of a life that... Well, hard doesn't exactly cover it. And if you don't find what you're looking for...”

“I failed,” he found himself mumbling. “Fuck, I was studying for...”

“I'm not saying you failed,” Tethys snapped, shaking her head. “Not at all. I haven't seen what's in there. What I am saying is that I should have had this talk with you sweeps ago, but I didn't, and I failed you in that regard. So we're doing this here and now.”

“Tethys...”

“The life you're throwing yourself so blindly at isn't easy. I know it can seem like that with how well I live, but I'm in a unique position. More than eighty percent of those individuals who ultimately work for me do not live comfortably. They live in small, land or sea bound hives that they rarely see for how long they are up working. Some rarely see their slabs at day, others have trouble sleeping for the things they have seen. The world we live in isn't perfect, Eridan. There are a terrible number of things that give even me horrors at night. I've seen the worst that trolls are capable of, and rarely ever their best. Death, mindless violence, hurting others for the rush of power, or revenge, or because they could not care less for the value of life.

“And it doesn't stop there. I have more scars than I can count. More than you'd find on a troll addicted to blackrom. All of them tell stories and only three of them are of pitch romances. I've been shot, stabbed, cut, throttled... Hell, I have a particularly nasty one from an iron spike that a drug addled troll thrust completely through my thigh. And, in the grand scheme of things, the pains I've lived through are nothing compared to the terrors I've seen inflicted upon the victims I'm supposed to help, supposed to have protected. I've spent my life trying to make the world a better place, and the hardest part is knowing that I've barely made a scratch on the surface of all that troubles us.”

She stopped long enough for a deep breath before turning to face him once more, her eyes almost brimming over with unshed tears. “This isn't the life I'd want for you. This isn't the life I'd wish on anyone, even a kismesis. Even my worst enemy. It is a life of pain, suffering, and helplessness. And I wish I had told you all of that before.”

“This is what I want,” Eridan promised, forcing his voice full of all the conviction that he could manage to find in himself. “I want to help people.”

“There are other, better ways to do that,” she answered, her voice tight. “I worry that I never gave you a chance to consider them. So please, Eridan, tell me you've thought about this. Tell me...”

He knew what she was asking. Had he truly taken the time to consider how else he could serve Beforus? The truth of the matter, of course, was that he hadn't. Even now when he turned his pan to the idea he couldn't remotely begin to fathom just what else he might look toward. Quickly he flipped through options, and just as rapidly as they came he discarded them. The truth was that as hard as he tried, he knew he wouldn't find a fit. Yes, there was truth in the fact that if he was rejected from the Enforcers he'd have to find something else, but that was a hypothetical he'd rather avoid. Better to take the rejection when it came and make decisions then.

“I've thought about it,” he promised. “But this is what I want. And you said that you'd always support me in what I wanted. That while I'd have to work hard all my life to make up for my... shortcomings, you'd always be there to help me. To guide me. Is that no longer true?”

“Oh Eridan, it's always been true, and always will be,” she promised, pulling him into one of her punishingly tight hugs. “Always and forever I'll be here to help and guide you. I just want you to be certain that this is what you want.”

“More than anything,” he promised right back. “So...”

Tethys smiled as she released him and passed the package over to him. “Congratulations.”

He could feel his eyes go wide as she spoke. Hadn't she said that she didn't... But no, Tethys never lied to him as it was. Her words were always precisely true. She hadn't seen what was in the package because it hadn't been prepared in front of her. Yet she was the Generali of the Enforcers. The results of the testing, even of her own ward, would be readily available to her were she to demand it. She'd known, always known, just what would happen when he opened the package. This, all of this, had been a way of her being sure that this was what he had really wanted. Strange how he hadn't really thought about the importance of that before.

Still, when the package was dropped into his lap, there was still a moment of hesitation. At last, though, his fingers started to move on their own, pulling free flap after flap of protective film, until all that was left was a film of biopaper and a bundle of cloth. The cloth told him all he needed to know, yet he still stared down at the paper, letting his eyes cast over it to confirm what he already knew. After he'd read through the official commission twice he set it aside and riffled through his training uniform. Soon he would try the whole thing on, make sure it fit properly for his first day of academy, but for now there was one thing he was interested in above all others.

“You're looking for this?” Tethys asked, and it wasn't until a weight settled over his shoulders that he realized his guardian had risen and gone off somewhere while he was reading. And now, he noticed, the weight came from a black solar protection garment draped over his shoulders. An Enforcer's coat. His Enforcer's coat.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things got... Complicated once winter hit. I was supposed to be back mid-January, but I got sick, then my fiance got sick, and then yeah, all that stuff. Still working on the Tethys side-fic, but I felt I needed to handle this first all things considered. I don't want this story falling into the same hole that DtD did this time last year.

“She's in a better motherfucking place,” Gamzee offered, and there was nothing in Eridan that could begin to agree with the purpleblood's conclusion. A better place? Wasn't life supposed to be a better place? Wasn't being here, at the side of her Empress, a better place? No, there was nothing 'better' in a death like this. Nothing and there never would be either.

That didn't mean he could afford to stay there, staring at the coat he had draped over his lost guardian and hating Gamzee for his stupid platitude. There were things to be done, people to be helped, and nookstains who thought themselves so far outside of the law that they could do whatever they wanted. He had every intention of dedicating his life to proving them wrong. Maybe if he avenged his guardian, the Empress, this whole damn Empire, maybe that would put the victims in a better place. If not it would at least satisfy his need for vengeance.

No, he had to remind himself, his fist clenching so tightly that he could feel his nails pressing painfully into the skin, not vengeance. Never vengeance. Justice. That was what his guardian had raised him to believe in. That was what she had given her life to. There was no chance that he could live up to the expectations she had set for him if he failed to devote himself just as powerfully to the ideal. 

“Gamzee,” he found himself saying with a levelness to his voice that astonished him, “I need you to do something for me.”

“What ever you up and need from me, I will motherfucking deliver, my brother,” Gamzee assured him, his face a picture of obedience as Eridan finally turned to look at him. 

“There's a lot that has to be done here. It's going to take a while, and I can't do it properly if I'm afraid for Fef. I need you to go and...”

“Not even motherfucking happening,” the purpleblood snarled, his voice sending a shiver down Eridan's spine. In all the time that he'd known Gamzee, in all the interactions he'd had with him, he had never grown used to the viciousness the normally sedate troll had been displaying since insisting that he join Eridan in the journey to the grandballblock. All of the earlier obedience and deference had melted away into a flashing fury in his eyes that made the yellow of them seem to blur toward orange. It made sense when Eridan glanced at the shorter, sharp cornered, red and teal clad troll at his side. While he'd never had a kismesis of his own, he knew enough of the theory behind it to know that it would be almost impossible to drag Gamzee from his blackest quadrant so long as he thought she might be in danger. “Ain't nothing going to keep me from keeping this addlepan from getting herself up and killed.”

“Do you really think that I'd be at any kind of risk now that the source of the problem has been removed?” the tealblood demanded with the calm, certain, unshakable confidence of someone that could only be a legistroll of one persuasion or another. An interesting choice of kismesis for a guidance adjustor like Makara, but there was clearly more than met the eye with the sharp woman. 

“No,” Eridan sighed, shaking his head. “He has a point. I can't ask him to leave without you, and I can't let you go. You're a witness to what has happened here Miss...”

“Pyrope. Terezi Pyrope,” the tealblood quickly provided, though it seemed more out of force of habit than any real desire to introduce herself. 

“Miss Pyrope. I need to know what you saw, what you remember, every last detail. I don't know what detail might be the key to...”

“You should look into Vriska Serket. She's the one that attacked you up on the podium.”

Eridan found himself unable to do much more than just stare at this Terezi Pyrope in shock. Was it really possible that he'd managed to find the only other individual in the whole ballroomblock who actually happened to know Vriska Serket? How was it even possible? From what little he knew of her, Vriska was the kind of troll to make sure she left an impression but never in places where it could come back and bite her in the ass. So did that make this troll's presence quite interesting, and possibly telling. 

“Serket's her auspmesis,” Gamzee offered after a moment, his lips turning into a vicious smirk. “Karkat is their auspistice.”

That... explained a lot when he really wrapped his pan around what he was seeing. While he didn't know much about the complicated interplay that had led to the final form of Gamzee's quadrants, he had heard hints of the period before Karkat and Gamzee pledged red. About the complicated ploy of someone Gamzee was inclade with and how it facilitated moving Karkat's red-hinted relationship with one troll into a decidedly ashen one that freed his red quadrant up for Gamzee. It had sounded like something out of the plot of one of those romantic comedy movies that Karkat and his new mentor obsessed over. Now it had become strangely useful for the current situation.

Except, of course, for one important point. 

“Did you see Serket before the explosion?” Eridan demanded, his voice still calmer than he felt. Was it possible that...

“She was passing out drinks,” Terezi told him, a pensive look on her face. 

“And did you take one?”

“Yeah, but...”

“Gamzee, take her to a healthtender now,” he commanded, ignoring the outraged look that flashed across the tealblood's face. 

“I don't need a healthtender!” she protested loudly, even as Gamzee's hand clamped down around her wrist. Still, there was a questioning look on his face as well. Looks like he'd have to waste time with explanations, which wasn't something he wanted all things considered.

“Look around us. There are way more trolls down than make logical sense for the way things played out. It's likely there was a poison in the drinks, one that affects the different bloodcolors differently. You took a drink from your auspmesis that might have been poisoned, and she likely had a reason to want you dead, if nothing else than for what personal knowledge you have of her. So until I am assured that you aren't going to keel over and die on me, we are going to act as if you will at any moment. Gamzee...”

The look of outrage and indignation on Terezi's face was more than clear as Eridan explained his logic. Clearly she was going to protest any moment if given the chance. Thankfully the look on Gamzee's face was that now familiar combination of righteous fury and absolute refusal that could only mean one thing. His too-large hands slammed over Terezi's opening mouth before he bodily lifted the smaller troll and hauled her away toward the healthtenders that had started to arrive with a flock of fresh Enforcers on the far side of the block. For a moment he worried that he should have told Gamzee to bring her back or at least send him a message if they were taken away so he'd know, but then there was a young Enforcer, one who looked to be almost of an age with himself, running up to him.

“Sir...” the troll, a ceruleanblood by the trim of his coat, greeted even as he kept his eyes averted in deference. The young ones were always like that with superiors on his level, and it never stopped being awkward for Eridan. He could have gone to schoolfeeding with this young Enforcer, and yet he was still treated the same way that a troll centuries older than him would be annoyed by. Eventually he was going to have to either get used to such treatment, or send out an agency wide memo telling them to lay off or suffer some kind of wrath.

“What could you possibly want right now?” he demanded, striding past the shorter troll as he made his way back toward the masses of victims and witnesses that all had to be interviewed before they could be released or at least freed enough to inform their families or quads that they were alive and well. 

“Sir, I was... Uh... I told to report to the Generali to serve as her assistant during the investigation,” the ceruleanblood all but stammered as he followed in Eridan's silently fuming wake. “I was hoping you could tell me where she was at this juncture.”

It was possible that he didn't know. Or that he wasn't watching the broadcast that would have shown his guardian's death. Maybe the broadcast hadn't shown it. Possibly there was confusion or hope that she'd survived or maybe he just wasn't all that bright. What he was certain of was that it wasn't that this kid was intending to be cruel. No, he'd just asked the wrong question, none-the-wiser about how badly it would hurt him to hear.

“She's back there,” Eridan answered as levelly as he could for all that he wanted to turn around and tear the other troll's throat out. “Under my coat.”

That was apparently all the other troll needed to hear, because in moments his footsteps accelerated and Eridan all but sensed the ceruleanblood fall into step beside him. Thankfully he was smart enough to not say anything about what Eridan had told him; the troll just pulled out a notepad and pen and flipped to a blank page. No condolences, no apologies, no empty platitudes that would mean absolutely nothing to Eridan. Just straight into business, to the task of fixing the problem however he could. 

He was sorely tempted to give the young troll a promotion on the spot. 

“I was never good at note-taking,” Eridan lied through his teeth, and the barely audible scoff under the troll's breath was enough to tell him that the other troll knew it as well. 

Still, it was an easy lie, and all he needed to make it clear to the young Enforcer that he understood, he accepted, and he was willing to take this little work relationship for a spin, so the kid better impress him. After all, the regime was changing over, and Eridan was going to need people he could trust and rely on at the top. Yeah, his guardian's top trolls were all good, but he knew as well as she had that they were sticking around for her. That they didn't like the idea of reporting to a kid. They had stuck around hoping, maybe figuring that when it came to it the Empress would ask one of them to step up when her moirail eventually retired or passed on. But there was a new Empress now, a new order, and with him on top things were going to have to change because they were going to change whether he wanted it or not.

Too bad he couldn't get the one Enforcer he'd had his eyes on having as his trusted second when this day eventually came. Granted he had expected this moment to come almost half a century from now. That had been what they had been talking about timing wise. But nothing was perfect, nothing had gone his way before, so why should he complain now?

After all, his guardian wasn't the first part of his planned out future that had died long before their time.

* * * * * *

“Secondar Ampora? I... No one informed me that you would be...”

“No one was informed that I was going to be here,” Eridan offered along with his outstretched hand. “Of course, no one else was expecting you to arrive so early.”

“I did not see informing central division as to my arrival time as relevant to the situation,” Alyssm Waleti informed him with all of the self-assured coolness that her superiors noted in their reports on her. Of course, there was also quite a bit about her that the reports didn't note. How that self-assurance spread past her voice and into the way she carried herself, into the tight and yet playful choice of braiding her hair, and even into the impassiveness of her features as she stared at him. 

Her picture didn't do any justice to the beauty she possessed. 

“I think that when it comes to issues such as those presented by Comtroll Captor, it's the Generali or myself or someone else a bit higher up than you to decide what is and isn't relevant,” Eridan countered. The indigoblooded woman seemed to consider the words for a moment before nodding almost imperceptibly to herself and shaking his outstretched hand. Her hand was warm in his, the way an indigoblood's always felt, but markedly lacking the clamminess that he had come to expect of Zahhak. 

“I suppose that is your prerogative, sir,” she replied, still cool and collected. “I do wonder how you were capable of...”

“I know more than can be expected,” Eridan admitted, turning and opening the hatch on the crawler. “It is safe to assume that you intended to proceed directly to speak with Comtroll Captor, but there are things we need to speak about as well.”

“Forgive me, Sir, but I cannot begin to fathom just what business we have with each other outside of Captor, so I feel it would be best if we were to...”

“Get in the crawler, Waleti. That's an order.” 

It came out more snarly than he wanted, harder than he expected, and all together not what he had intended it to be. This wasn't the way things were supposed to go, but there was only so much he could do about that now. What was said was in the past, what to be said in the future. It was the future he was supposed to look toward now, not the past. Past was for warmer thoughts than the ones running through his head, and investigation of crimes. The future... was a colder thing to think about.

“And if I said I was not currently on duty?”

With that Eridan couldn't help but smirk. “How else am I supposed to take the fact that you're in your uniform?”

That actually led to the most minor twitch of Waleti's lips, a smirk half a millisecond long. There, for just a moment, he had made her almost smile. Now if only he could figure out how to draw a real one out of her. 

“I suppose you do have me there,” Waleti ceded as she finally moved past him and slipped into the crawler. “I am here on official business, but it seems you are intent to stand between me and my duty.”

“It is more than just your duty you're doing here,” he pointed out as he moved to join her in the crawler and close the hatch behind him. “We could have had him escorted from Capitol on our own, or you could have sent a subordinate. But...” Eridan paused to punch in a destination. “Instead you came here on your own to see to this. I am surprised, to be frank with you. All this distance for a Comtroll?”

“Sollux Captor's special condition puts him into a special category when it comes to handling issues,” she responded quite curtly, and for a moment Eridan almost froze. There was something there, in her voice, that made no sense. Something that his pan told him not to go after. “There was always a question as to whether or not to bring him into the active force. There were concerns related to his temperament as well as his powers. It was my word that put him into the uniform after his time in the academy. Many of my superiors insisted it was a poor choice, that he was going to end up here in Capitol under the Generali anyway. I intended... Intend to prove them wrong.”

“Such is your right,” Eridan acknowledged, leaning forward to view the map of the route the landcrawler was taking to their destination and then redirecting it onto a longer route with just a few strokes of his finger over the screen. “But we both know that the ones Tethys wants are the ones she gets.”

That made Waleti stiffen in her seat in a way that Eridan hated, but he forced himself to ignore it. So there was more that had driven her here than just her responsibilities. There was more to this Sollux Captor than what he had done as well. It hurt, but it didn't matter. No, he had to look forward. Always forward. To who he would someday be, to who he would need to help him. Only then would he really be free to go after what he wanted. Needs first, desires later.

“He does not deserve what she offers.”

“Maybe,” Eridan acknowledged before fully relaxing back into his seat. “But in all honestly that's not what I'm here to talk about.”

“Then what is?”

“I've read your file.”

Just like clockwork Waleti went on the defense. Any troll he said that to seemed to do that, whether they'd ever done anything wrong or not. There was just something about the idea of having people read pieces of paper with information about you on it that set a troll to snarling and bearing their teeth. Strange, she was lovely even when she looked ready to bite him. 

“Those are...”

“I'm the Secondar. It's not really private to me. And I'm not here to reprimand you for slugging your superior or anything like that. You should know as well as I do that your file is full of glowing praise and positive remarks.” That seemed to calm Waleti down, but only a little bit. 

“Just why do you care?”

“Because I am having a lot of trouble finding Enforcers with nearly so much promise and so much of a future before them,” he said utterly honestly. “There will be a day in the future where I'm not the Secondar, Waleti. There are a lot of those on the top rungs of the Enforcer ladder who aren't happy with that. They aren't exactly quiet about it either. Eventually, unfortunately, I'm going to be at the top and while politics say I have to play nice, I know more than half will be ditching the service. I'll need the best to replace them.”

“And you're telling me this, why?”

Eridan just gave her his best conspiratorial smirk. “Because you're going to be one of those replacements if you play your cards right.”

Waleti looked just about ready to spit. “And what do you want in return?”

“For you to be the best for whatever position I need you in. To keep up your record. To surprise your superiors at every turn and make sure that when you climb it's always into positions to make yourself look better and fit better. When I pull you up, I want it to be an easy thing. I don't want fights.”

“And if I don't want to be tugged up on your coattails?”

“Oh no,” Eridan laughed, shaking his head, “I'm not pulling you anywhere. I'm saying that when I come to offer you the position as my Secondar, when that day comes, you better be qualified for it.”

The timing was perfect. Just as Eridan let the words sink in the crawler came to a stop outside of the temporary residency hivestem where Sollux Captor was waiting for his escort. He left Waleti sitting there, gaping at him, as he opened the hatch and stepped out into the fading light of day, pulling the hood of his uniform solar protection garment over his head. He had other business. Right now the seeds were planted, which was all he needed.

If everything went well, he'd have plenty of time to win her over in the future. Needs first. Wants later.


End file.
